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Microbial Community Transplant Results in Increased and Long-Term Oxalate Degradation

  • Host Microbe Interactions
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Abstract

Gut microbes are essential for the degradation of dietary oxalate, and this function may play a role in decreasing the incidence of kidney stones. However, many oxalate-degrading bacteria are susceptible to antibiotics and the use of oxalate-degrading probiotics has only led to an ephemeral reduction in urinary oxalate. The objective of the current study was to determine the efficacy of using whole-community microbial transplants from a wild mammalian herbivore, Neotoma albigula, to increase oxalate degradation over the long term in the laboratory rat, Rattus norvegicus. We quantified the change in total oxalate degradation in lab rats immediately after microbial transplants and at 2- and 9-month intervals following microbial transplants. Additionally, we tracked the fecal microbiota of the lab rats, with and without microbial transplants, using high-throughput Illumina sequencing of a hyper-variable region of the 16S rRNA gene. Microbial transplants resulted in a significant increase in oxalate degradation, an effect that persisted 9 months after the initial transplants. Functional persistence was corroborated by the transfer, and persistence of a group of bacteria previously correlated with oxalate consumption in N. albigula, including an anaerobic bacterium from the genus Oxalobacter known for its ability to use oxalate as a sole carbon source. The results of this study indicate that whole-community microbial transplants are an effective means for the persistent colonization of oxalate-degrading bacteria in the mammalian gut.

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Acknowledgments

This project was funded by NSF (grant DEB-1342615 to M. Denise Dearing and Colin Dale) and NIH (grant 1F32DK102277-01A1 to Aaron W. Miller). We thank Kevin Kohl for help in collecting animals; Adam Schmidt, Caleb Felicetti, and Ky-Phuong Luong for help with diet trials; and Bob Weiss for feedback on the experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Utah, 257 South 1400 East, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Aaron W. Miller, Kelly F. Oakeson, Colin Dale & M. Denise Dearing

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  1. Aaron W. Miller
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  2. Kelly F. Oakeson
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  4. M. Denise Dearing
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Correspondence to Aaron W. Miller.

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Miller, A.W., Oakeson, K.F., Dale, C. et al. Microbial Community Transplant Results in Increased and Long-Term Oxalate Degradation. Microb Ecol 72, 470–478 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-016-0800-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-016-0800-2

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