Disruption of transkingdom communication by antibiotics leads to immune and mitochondrial dysfunction in the gut (LMD). Mus musculus

We analyzed the effects of antibiotics using a popular model of gut microbiota depletion in mice by a cocktail of antibiotics. We combined intestinal transcriptome together with metagenomic analysis of the gut microbiota to develop a new bioinformatics approach that probes the links between microbial components and host functions. We found that most antibiotic-induced alterations can be explained by three factors: depletion of the microbiota; direct effects of antibiotics on host tissues; and the effects of remaining antibiotic-resistant microbes. While microbe depletion led to down-regulation of immunity, the two other factors primarily inhibited mitochondrial gene expression and amounts of active mitochondria, and induced cell death. By reconstructing and analyzing a transkingdom network, we discovered that these toxic effects were mediated by virulence/quorum sensing in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This series includes gene expression of the laser microdissected compartments of the ileum such as villous epithelium, lamina propria and crypts from specific pathogen free mice Overall design: common reference design with a pool of small intestine RNA labeled with Cy3