Microbiota of MR1 deficient mice confer resistance against Clostridium difficile infection

Authors

Ashley D. Smith, Food and Drug Administration
Elissa D. Foss, Food and Drug Administration
Irma Zhang, Food and Drug Administration
Jessica L. Hastie, Food and Drug Administration
Nicole P. Giordano, Food and Drug Administration
Lusine Gasparyan, Food and Drug Administration
Lam Phuc VinhNguyen, Food and Drug Administration
Alyxandria M. Schubert, Food and Drug Administration
Deepika Prasad, Food and Drug Administration
Hannah L. McMichael, Food and Drug Administration
Jinchun Sun, National Center for Toxicological Research
Richard D. Beger, National Center for Toxicological Research
Vahan Simonyan, Food and Drug Administration
Siobhán C. Cowley, Food and Drug Administration
Paul E. Carlson, Food and Drug Administration

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

9-1-2019

Journal

PLoS ONE

Volume

14

Issue

9

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0223025

Abstract

This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Clostridium difficile (Cd) infection (CDI) typically occurs after antibiotic usage perturbs the gut microbiota. Mucosa-associated invariant T cells (MAIT) are found in the gut and their development is dependent on Major histocompatibility complex-related protein 1 (MR1) and the host microbiome. Here we were interested in determining whether the absence of MR1 impacts resistance to CDI. To this end, wild-type (WT) and MR1-/- mice were treated with antibiotics and then infected with Cd spores. Surprisingly, MR1-/- mice exhibited resistance to Cd colonization. 16S rRNA gene sequencing of feces revealed inherent differences in microbial composition. This colonization resistance was transferred from MR1-/- to WT mice via fecal microbiota transplantation, suggesting that MR1-dependent factors influence the microbiota, leading to CDI susceptibility.

APA Citation

Smith, A., Foss, E., Zhang, I., Hastie, J., Giordano, N., Gasparyan, L., VinhNguyen, L., Schubert, A., Prasad, D., McMichael, H., Sun, J., Beger, R., Simonyan, V., Cowley, S., & Carlson, P. (2019). Microbiota of MR1 deficient mice confer resistance against Clostridium difficile infection. PLoS ONE, 14 (9). http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223025