The impact of Parkinson's disease-associated gut microbiota on the transcriptome in Drosophila

Gut microbiota plays important roles in regulating host gene expression and physiology through complex mechanisms. Recently, it has been suggested that disorder of gut microbiota is involved in the pathophysiological process of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the molecular mechanism of gut microbiota in regulating the pathogenesis of PD is still lacking. In this study, to investigate the impact of PD-associated gut microbiota on host transcriptome, we established various PD models with fecal microbiota transplantation in the model organism Drosophila followed by integrative data analysis of microbiome and transcriptome. We also verified our findings by transplanting Drosophila with fecal samples from clinical PD patients. Our results demonstrated that PD-associated gut microbiota can induce differentially expressed genes enriched in diverse metabolic pathways. This study can help better understand the link between gut microbiota and PD pathogenesis through gut-brain axis.