Understanding the hepatoxicity of inorganic mercury through guts: Perturbance to gut microbiota, alteration of gut-liver axis related metabolites and damage to gut integrity

Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety

Hongxin Xie¹  Bai Li¹  Liwei Cui²  Lina He²  Wei Zhang³  Jiating Zhao³  Bo Feng⁴  Yu-Feng Li⁴  Xiaoying Lin⁵  Heyun Zhu⁶ 

[1] Beijing Metallomics Facility, &;CAS Key Laboratory for Biological Effects of Nanomaterials and Nanosafety, &;CAS-HKU Joint Laboratory of Metallomics on Health and Environment, &National Consortium for Excellence in Metallomics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China;Jilin Medical University, Jilin 132013, Jilin, China;State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang 550081, Guizhou, China;

关键词: Inorganic mercury;    Gut microbiome;    Gut-liver axis;    Metabolites;    Hepatoxicity;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Mercury (Hg) brings adverse effects to the environment and human beings and inorganic mercury (IHg) is a typical hepatic toxin. This work studied the impacts of IHg on gut microbes and metabolome together with its damage to liver and gut in rats through gut microbiome, metabolomics and metallomics. Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were orally exposed to 0.4 μg/mL IHg and sacrificed after 24 h. It was found that IHg perturbed greatly on the gut microbiota, such as increased pathogenic bacteria like G. bacillus. In addition, IHg also changed gut-liver axis related metabolites, which was confirmed by the secretion of a large number of inflammatory factors in both the gut and the liver. The changed gut-liver axis related metabolites correlated well to the changes of gut microbiome. In all, besides the direct deposition in liver of Hg, the perturbance to gut microbiome and alteration of gut-liver axis related metabolites by IHg also contributed to its hepatoxicity, which provides new insights about the hepatoxicity of chemicals. The strategy applied in this work may also be used to understand the hepatoxicity of other chemicals.

【 授权许可】

Unknown