Affiliations: 1) Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences, College of Life Sciences, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT; 2) Department of Pharmacology, College of Graduate Studies, Midwestern University, Glendale, AZ; 3) Biomedical Sciences Program, College of Graduate Studies, Midwestern University, Glendale, AZ
Keywords: a. neural degeneration; m. microbiome
The gut-brain axis is defined as the bi-directional interactions that occur between the brain and the gut of an organism. Considering this interaction, the brain is also known to affect the gut microbiome of an organism. The microbiome has specifically been shown to be affected by many neurological diseases. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects motor function. We are interested in studying the interactions between the gut microbiome and PD. Current research has shown that the microbiome of an individual with PD differs from the microbiome of a healthy individual. This has been exhibited in humans and mice. We predicted that we would detect this same variation in the microbiota of D. melanogaster (fruit fly) models of PD, relative to a genetically matched control. To test this hypothesis, we used five PD fruit fly models obtained from four different laboratories, each mimicking human PD by different mutations in their genome. We collected and analyzed 16S rRNA sequence, reporting the microbiota composition in our fly samples. We found various microbes that were differentially abundant between control and PD models at a genus level. We also show that the bacterial diversity of PD models is overall significantly lower than in control flies, consistent with the idea that individuals with declined health show lower diversity in their gut microbiome. The major conclusion of our work is that there is significant variation in microbiota composition between conventionally reared fly models of PD and their controls. This shows that the differences seen in humans and other models are also present in fruit flies.