Dietary fibre intervention study in mice reveals associations between individual colonic mucin glycans and specific gut bacteria

Increasing the consumption of dietary fibre has been proposed to improve metabolic health and gut microbiota composition. Although many products are commercially available as a means of increasing fibre intake, limited research have been conducted on their efficacy. Here we performed a multiple diet feeding study in high-fat diet-fed C57BL/6J mice to examine the effect of two commercially available fibre products, NutriKane™ and Benefiber®, on the host physiology and gut microbiota using an array of omics techniques including glycomics. Our results demonstrate significant changes in the host physiology, liver proteome, gut microbiota and SCFA production in response to high fat diet. Dietary fibre intervention did not ameliorate all high fat diet-induced changes but was associated with specific changes in the gut microbiota, liver proteome and SCFA production. Conversely, dietary fibre intervention was associated with greater changes in the host colonic mucin glycosylation compared to high fat diet. Correlation network analysis revealed significant associations between specific colonic mucin glycans and specific gut bacteria. For example, the abundance of Core 2 glycans containing a Gal ß1-3/4 linked to the GlcNAc correlated with the abundance of bacterial OTUs in the phylum Bacteroidetes. The abundance of glycans with terminal epitopes such as Fuc or NeuAc correlated with the abundance of OTUs in the families Lactobacillaceae and Clostridiaceae. This comprehensive omics-based study demonstrates for the first time how individual colonic mucin glycans associate with specific gut bacterial groups.