Search Results (2)

Ligia feed on seashore algae and remove organic debris from the coastal zone, thereby playing an important role in the intertidal ecosystem. Nevertheless, the specific roles of distinct gut segments in the gut transit remain unclear. We collected and identified Ligia exotica specimens in the coast of Aoshanwei, Qingdao, Shandong Province, and analyzed their foreguts and hindguts for 16S rRNA, metagenomics, metabolomics, and proteomics. The concentrations of common metabolites, NO₃⁻-N and NH₄⁺-N, and the contents of C and N were measured. The gut transit decreased the abundances of the dominant phyla Cyanobacteria but increased Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria, and Planctomycetes and Bacteroidetes remained relatively constant. The foregut gut microbiota is involved in the carbohydrates and amino acids metabolism, as well as the decomposition of polysaccharides. The hindgut gut microbiota performs a variety of functions, including carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism, fermentation, cell motility, intracellular transport, secretion, and vesicular translocation, and the decomposition of polysaccharides, disaccharides, and oligosaccharides. The results of omics analyses and molecular experiments demonstrated that the metabolic processes involving amino acids and carbohydrates are more active in the foregut, whereas the fermentation, absorption, and assimilation processes are more active in the hindgut. Taken together, the differences in microbial community structure determine the functional specialization of different gut segments, i.e., the foregut appears to be the primary site for digesting food, while the hindgut further processes and absorbs nutrients and then excretes them. Full article

In vitro experiments have demonstrated that camel foregut-fluid has the capacity to metabolize indospicine, a natural toxin which causes hepatotoxicosis, but such metabolism is in competition with absorption and outflow of indospicine from the different segments of the digestive system. Six young camels were fed Indigofera spicata (337 µg indospicine/kg BW/day) for 32 days, at which time three camels were euthanized. The remaining camels were monitored for a further 100 days after cessation of this indospicine diet. In a retrospective investigation, relative levels of indospicine foregut-metabolism products were examined by UHPLC-MS/MS in plasma, collected during both accumulation and depletion stages of this experiment. The metabolite 2-aminopimelamic acid could be detected at low levels in almost all plasma samples, whereas 2-aminopimelic acid could not be detected. In the euthanized camels, 2-aminopimelamic acid could be found in all tissues except muscle, whereas 2-aminopimelic acid was only found in the kidney, pancreas, and liver tissues. The clearance rate for these metabolites was considerably greater than for indospicine, which was still present in plasma of the remaining camels 100 days after cessation of Indigofera consumption. Full article