Silent recognition by Toll-like receptor 5 of flagellins from human gut commensal bacteria

Flagellins from commensal bacteria can be weak Toll-like receptor (TLR)5 agonists despite high affinity binding to TLR5, ligands we termed “silent flagellins”. To determine if silent flagellins are detectable in the human gut, endogenous flagellins produced by the microbiota were isolated from stool obtained from a healthy adult female donor. TLR5 was used as bait to enrich for silent flagellins and TLR5-bound flagellins were identified by searching peptides against a custom flagellin database built from metagenome sequences.