Regulators of Gut Motility Revealed by a Gnotobiotic Model of Diet-Microbiome Interactions Related to Travel

To understand how different diets, the consumers’ gut microbiota and the enteric nervous system (ENS) interact to regulate gut motility, we developed a gnotobiotic mouse model that mimics short-term dietary changes that happen when humans are traveling to places with different culinary traditions. Studying animals transplanted with the microbiota from humans representing each cuisine and fed a sequence of diets representing those of all donors, we find that correlations between bacterial species abundances and transit times are diet-dependent. However, the levels of unconjugated bile acids - reflecting microbial bile salt hydrolase activity - correlate with faster transit across diets, including a Bangladeshi diet. Mice harboring a consortium of sequenced bacterial strains from the Bangladeshi donor’s microbiota and fed a Bangladeshi…