Microbiome Alteration in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Model of Zebrafish

Understanding the gut microbiota in metabolic disorders, including type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), is now gaining importance due to its potential role in disease risk and progression. We previously established a zebrafish model of T2DM, which shows glucose intolerance with insulin resistance and responds to anti-diabetic drugs. In this study, we analysed the gut microbiota of T2DM zebrafish by deep sequencing the 16S rRNA V3-V4 hypervariable regions, and imputed a functional profile using predictive metagenomic tools. While control and T2DM zebrafish were fed with the same kind of feed, the gut microbiota in T2DM group was less diverse than that of the control. Predictive metagenomics profiling using PICRUSt revealed functional alternation of the KEGG pathways in T2DM zebrafish. Several amino acid metabolism pathways (arginine, proline, and phenylalanine) were downregulated in the T2DM group, similar to what has been previously reported in humans. In summary, we profiled the gut microbiome in T2DM zebrafish, which revealed functional similarities in gut bacterial environments between these zebrafish and T2DM affected humans. T2DM zebrafish can become an alternative model organism to study host-bacterial interactions in human obesity and related diseases.