Investigation of the citral effect on the fecal microbiota of C57BL/6J mice fed with a high-fat diet

• Grant number: 21/11110-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: February 01, 2022
• End date: January 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Pharmacology - Ethnopharmacology
• Principal Investigator: Clélia Akiko Hiruma Lima
• Grantee: Maycon Tavares Emílio Silva
• Supervisor: Julio Gálvez
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IBB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidad de Granada (UGR), Spain
• Associated to the scholarship: 20/15225-1 - Evaluation of the citral action in the intestinal permeability and metabolic endotoxemia in obese mice fed with high-fat diet, BP.DR

Abstract

Obesity is a serious public health problem that affects worldwide. Intake of an unbalanced and fat-rich diet is one of the main factors that favor obesity development. In addition, it is being directly related to changes in the intestinal microenvironment that trigger systemic changes. Gut microbiota plays the commensal role with the host, ensuring the homeostasis of the intestinal microenvironment, and even protecting against opportunistic infections. In obesity, occurs a process denominated gut dysbiosis, causing a decrease of the bacterial population diversity, mainly, a reduction in Bacteroidetes: Firmicutes ratio. This profile causes a greater disposition of calories to the individual, favoring weight gain in obesity. Furthermore, it is reported that gut dysbiosis causes an increase in gut permeability, resulting in the extravasation of bacterial components into the systemic circulation, causing the activation of an inflammatory response, characteristic during obesity. Given this key role of the gut microbiota, the search for multitargeted drugs that also act as dysbiosis modulators for the treatment of obesity becomes important. Citral is a racemic mixture of monoterpenes that has anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and anti-obesogenic activities previously described in the literature. This project aims to evaluate the citral effect in the gut microbiota modulation of obese C57BL/J6 mice with a high-fat diet (HFD). For this, the fecal microbiota will be evaluated by sequencing the total fecal DNA through multiplexing in Illumina MiSeq. The sequences obtained will be submitted to taxonomic classification and metagenomic analysis in a database. These data can elucidate the citral impact in the modulation of microbiota composition of obese and eutrophic mice, contributing to the existing knowledge, especially as an obesity treatment. (AU)