Effect of triclosan on the fathead minnow gut microbiome

Triclosan is a widely used antimicrobial compound and emerging environmental contaminant. Although the role of the gut microbiome in health and disease is increasingly well established, the interaction between environmental contaminants and host microbiome is largely unexplored, with unknown consequences for host health. We hypothesized that low-level environmental triclosan exposure will directly affect host gut microbiome community structure, with potential downstream consequences for host health. In controlled laboratory experiments using an environmental toxicology model organism (the fathead minnow fish), we measured gut microbiome community structure in triclosan-exposed and control unexposed fish with DNA sequencing of a bacterial taxonomic marker gene (V3-V4 region of the 16S rDNA gene).