Humanized Mouse Fecal Microbiome

To determine if the the human microbiome influences arsenic toxicity, germ-free mice were colonized by fecal microbiomes from human donors with a history of arsenic exposure. These mice were deficient in the presence of the murine arsenic (III) methyltransferase gene (As3mt), and thus were especially sensitive to arsenic toxicity. To characterize the microbiome of these humanized mice, fecal pellet samples were collected after human microbiomes were allowed to stabilize in mice for 2 weeks. Further samples were collected after seven days of exposure to inorganic arsenate. Fecal pellet DNA was extracted and the microbiome community characterized by next-generation DNA amplicon sequencing of variable region 4 of the 16s rRNA gene.