Early-life disruption of amphibian microbiota decreases later-life resistance to parasites

Changes in the early-life microbiota of hosts might affect infectious disease risk throughout life, if such disruptions during formative times alter immune system development. Here, we test whether an early-life disruption of host-associated microbiota affects later-life resistance to infections by...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2017-07, Vol.8 (1), p.86-8, Article 86
Main Authors: Knutie, Sarah A., Wilkinson, Christina L., Kohl, Kevin D., Rohr, Jason R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/158/855
631/326/2565/2134
631/326/417/2546
631/601/2721
Adults
Animal models
Animals
Anura - immunology
Anura - microbiology
Disruption
Frogs
Humanities and Social Sciences
Infections
Intestinal Diseases, Parasitic
Larva - immunology
Larva - microbiology
Microbiota
multidisciplinary
Parasites
Parasitic Diseases, Animal - immunology
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:Changes in the early-life microbiota of hosts might affect infectious disease risk throughout life, if such disruptions during formative times alter immune system development. Here, we test whether an early-life disruption of host-associated microbiota affects later-life resistance to infections by manipulating the microbiota of tadpoles and challenging them with parasitic gut worms as adults. We find that tadpole bacterial diversity is negatively correlated with parasite establishment in adult frogs: adult frogs that had reduced bacterial diversity as tadpoles have three times more worms than adults without their microbiota manipulated as tadpoles. In contrast, adult bacterial diversity during parasite exposure is not correlated with parasite establishment in adult frogs. Thus, in this experimental setup, an early-life disruption of the microbiota has lasting reductions on host resistance to infections, which is possibly mediated by its effects on immune system development. Our results support the idea that preventing early-life disruption of host-associated microbiota might confer protection against diseases later in life. Early-life microbiota alterations can affect infection susceptibility later in life, in animal models. Here, Knutie et al. show that manipulating the microbiota of tadpoles leads to increased susceptibility to parasitic infection in adult frogs, in the absence of substantial changes in the adults’ microbiota.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-017-00119-0