Cecal lumen and crypt abundance in mice before and after surgery

Across the various intestinal compartments, the murine cecum, a pouch within the peritoneum that is considered to be beginning of the large intestine, is a major site of fermentation and production of short chain fatty acids. Within the cecum, the microbiota are localized to two compartments, the lumen and the crypts. The dynamic changes that occur in these sites during host stress, such as during surgical injury, are unknown. To elucidate such changes, we performed a compositional and functional analysis comparing the microbiota in crypts and the lumen across different cecal regions from the ileo-cecal junction to the blind end. Wild type C57/Bl6 mice were subjected to surgical stress that included a period of pre-operative starvation as occurs clinically, a single dose of a standard pre-operative antibiotic (cefoxitin) 30 min prior to surgery, and a sterile recoverable surgical injury (30% partial liver resection).