Insights into effects of sodium phytate on gut microbiome of mice by high-throughput sequencing

Abstract

Phytate, as the main phosphorus store in plant foods, is largely unavailable to monogastric animals, including humans, and has both adverse anti-nutritive and beneficial therapeutic effects for its consumers. The contradictory nature of phytate requires more caution when applying it. Administered phytate directly interacts with and affects gut microbiota, which has essential roles in host health. In this study, we investigated the effects of sodium phytate on the gut microbiome of mice by high-throughput sequencing. Mice were orally gavaged with 8 mg or 40 mg of sodium phytate per day for 4 weeks. The results indicate that phytate administration reduced the growth performance of mice in a dose-dependent manner. The diversity and composition of the gut microbiota in mice were significantly altered by phytate intake. Phytate promoted the growth of certain probiotics and inhibited that of some pathogens. Phytate did not cause obvious functional changes in the gut microbiota but reduced the abundance of inositol-phosphate-synthase–producing bacteria. Our results provide additional insights into the health-promoting effects of phytate on consumers.

Keywords:

• Phytate
• gut microbiome
• high-throughput sequencing
• anti-nutrient
• phosphorus utilization

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Majorbio Technology Co. Ltd. for high throughput sequencing, and Editage (www.editage.cn) for English language editing.

Authors’ contributions

XG: Study design, data analysis, funding and writing. LW, XL and YW: Study design; performed experiments and data analysis. JZ, ML and YY: Performed experiments. All of the authors have read and approved the final manuscript and have agreed on the submission to the journal.

Data availability statement

All data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The datasets involved in this study were deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Information database with accession no. PRJNA884098 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/?term=PRJNA884098).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a grant from Southwest Medical University (Grant No. 2021ZKMS045).