Colonic Gene expression in mice colonized with human gut microbiota from healthy and IBS patients

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a disorder of the gut-brain axis, characterized by altered gut function and frequent psychiatric co-morbidity. Although altered intestinal microbiome profiles have been documented, their relevance to the clinical expression of IBS is unknown. To evaluate a functional role of the microbiota, we colonized germ-free mice with fecal microbiota from healthy controls or IBS patients with accompanying anxiety, and monitored gut function and behavior. Mouse microbiota profiles clustered according to their human donors. Despite having taxonomically similar composition as controls, mice with IBS microbiota had distinct serum metabolomic profiles related to neuro- and immunomodulation. Mice with IBS, but not control microbiota, exhibited faster gastrointestinal transit, intestinal barrier dysfunction, innate immune activation and anxiety-like behavior. These results support the notion that the microbiota contributes to both intestinal and behavioral manifestations of IBS and rationalize the use of microbiota-directed therapies in ameliorating IBS. We extracted total RNA of colonic tissues extracted from germ-free NIH swiss mice (10-12 weeks) colonized with healthy human gut microbiota (10 mice per fecal sample, 5 fecal samples, total=50 mice), and mice colonized with human microbiota of IBS patients (10 mice per sample, 6 fecal samples, total =60 mice). We then pooled together all the RNA samples of all the mice colonized with the same microbiota, to form a representative sample for the colonization with that specific human fecal sample. We finally ran 11 samples in total through the NanoString nCounter® Gene Expression CodeSet for mouse inflammation genes.