TITLE:
Diversity of Microflora in Colonic Mucus from Severe Ulcerative Colitis Patients Analyzed by Terminal Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism and Clone Libraries of Bacterial 16S rRNA Gene Sequences
AUTHORS:
I-Nung Huang, Yuri Sato, Mitsuo Sakamoto, Moriya Ohkuma, Shinobu Ohnuma, Takeshi Naitoh, Chikashi Shibata, Akira Horii, Junko Nishimura, Haruki Kitazawa, Tadao Saito
KEYWORDS:
Ulcerative Colitis, Microflora, Terminal Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism, 16S rRNA Gene Clone Library
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Microbiology,
Vol.4 No.13,
October
8,
2014
ABSTRACT: Although the gut microflora is thought to be an essential factor in the
development of ulcerative colitis (UC), the entire gut microflora occurring in
UC remains unknown. Most studies use feces to represent the microflora
distribution; however, here we analyzed the bacterial diversity in colonic
mucus from UC patients receiving colectomy surgery and control patients. The
diversity of microflora was investigated using a combination of terminal
restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and clone library analyses of
the 16S rRNA gene sequences. In the T-RFLP analysis, the number of terminal
restriction fragments (T-RFs) decreased significantly in UC patients when
compared to control samples. Also in the clone library analysis, the number of
operational taxonomic units (OTU) and the Shannon diversity index were reduced
significantly in UC patients. These molecular analyses reveal an overall
dysbiosis in UC patients. No specific pathogen was found, and a strong negative
correlation in relative abundance of bacterial populations was observed between
the phyla Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes in the UC patients. This is the first
report showing a significant correlation between these two phyla, which may be
important characteristics in the pathogenesis of UC.