iScience (Dec 2020)

Elucidation of Gut Microbiota-Associated Lipids Using LC-MS/MS and 16S rRNA Sequence Analyses

  • Shu Yasuda,
  • Nobuyuki Okahashi,
  • Hiroshi Tsugawa,
  • Yusuke Ogata,
  • Kazutaka Ikeda,
  • Wataru Suda,
  • Hiroyuki Arai,
  • Masahira Hattori,
  • Makoto Arita

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 23, no. 12
p. 101841

Abstract

Read online

Summary: Host-microbiota interactions create a unique metabolic milieu that modulates intestinal environments. Integration of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) sequences and mass spectrometry (MS)-based lipidomics has a great potential to reveal the relationship between bacterial composition and the complex metabolic network in the gut. In this study, we conducted untargeted lipidomics followed by a feature-based molecular MS/MS spectral networking to characterize gut bacteria-dependent lipid subclasses in mice. An estimated 24.8% of lipid molecules in feces were microbiota-dependent, as judged by > 10-fold decrease in antibiotic-treated mice. Among these, there was a series of unique and microbiota-related lipid structures, including acyl alpha-hydroxyl fatty acid (AAHFA) that was newly identified in this study. Based on the integrated analysis of 985 lipid profiles and 16S rRNA sequence data providing 2,494 operational taxonomic units, we could successfully predict the bacterial species responsible for the biosynthesis of these unique lipids, including AAHFA.

Keywords