APOE genotype affects on the murine gut microbiome in an Alzheimers Disease model

Alzheimers Disease (AD) is the most common aging-related neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive memory loss. APOE is a gene with the most common heritable risk factor for AD and consists of three alleles that modulate risk. APOE2 is the protective allele, APOE3 is the common/normal allele, and APOE4 is the AD-risk allele. Our hypothesis is that APOE genotype affects the gut microbiome via crosstalk through the gut-brain-axis. To test this, we crossed APOE3 humanized transgenic mice to APOE2 and APOE4 mice to generate heterozygous progeny, resulting in APOE2/E2, APOE2/E3, APOE3/E3, APOE3/E4, and APOE4/E4 mice. We performed 16S ribosomal RNA gene amplicon sequencing of fecal, cecal and small bowel samples. This study includes raw sequence data for DNA samples that were re-sequenced from a study published in 2020 and collected in 2015, as well as those in our newest study collected in 2019 and published in 2022.