Transgenerational effects of early life stress on the fecal microbiota in mice

Stress in early life can affect the progeny and increase the risk to develop psychiatric and cardiometabolic diseases across generations. The cross-generational effects of early life stress have been modeled in mice and demonstrated to be associated with epigenetic factors in the germline. While stress is known to affect gut microbial features, whether its effects can persist across life and be passed to the progeny is not well defined. Here we show that early postnatal stress in mice shifts the fecal microbial composition (binary Jaccard index) throughout life, including abundance of eight amplicon sequencing variants (ASVs). Further effects on fecal microbial composition, structure (weighted Jaccard index), and abundance of 16 ASVs are detected in the progeny across two generations. These effects are not accompanied by changes in bacterial metabolites in any generation. These results suggest that changes in the fecal microbial community induced by early life traumatic stress can be perpetuated from exposed parent to the offspring.