Biology subjects

Gordon, J. I.

Publications and source records attributed to Gordon, J. I..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Small intestinal microbiota of undernourished women perturbs placental development in mice

Children of undernourished women have impaired pre- and postnatal growth. Undernourished women and children have a high incidence of environmental enteric dysfunction (EED), an enteropathy characterized by gut barrier dysfunction and systemic inflammation. Here, we employ gnotobiotic mice to compare the effects of bacterial consortia cultured from the duodenal microbiota of Bangladeshi women with EED and their healthy counterparts. Female mice harboring the EED-derived consortium exhibited fetal and placental growth restriction. Transcriptomic and proteomic analyses disclosed pronounced effects of the EED-derived consortium on the decidual component of the maternal-fetal interface involving tissue-resident uterine natural killer (uNK) cells and disruption of TGF-{beta} signaling between uNK and decidual stromal cells. Co-housing mice with EED and healthy consortia ameliorated these effects, disclosing bacterial targets to improve prenatal development.

systems biology↗

bioRxiv2021

Defining hierarchical protein interaction networks from spectral analysis of bacterial proteomes

Cellular phenotypes emerge from a hierarchy of molecular interactions: proteins interact to form complexes, pathways, and phenotypes. We show that hierarchical networks of protein interactions can be extracted from the statistical pattern of proteome variation as measured across thousands of bacteria and that these hierarchies reflect the emergence of complex bacterial phenotypes. We describe the mathematics underlying our statistical approach and validate our results through gene-set enrichment analysis and comparison to existing experimentally-derived hierarchical databases. We demonstrate the biological utility of our unbiased hierarchical models by creating a model of motility in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and using it to discover a previously unappreciated genetic effector of twitch-based motility. Overall, our approach, SCALES (Spectral Correlation Analysis of Layered Evolutionary Signals), predicts hierarchies of protein interaction networks describing emergent biological function using only the statistical pattern of bacterial proteome variation.

systems biology↗

bioRxiv2020

Microbiota functional activity biosensors for characterizing nutrient utilization in vivo

Methods for measuring gut microbiota biochemical activities in vivo are needed to characterize its functional states in health and disease. To illustrate one approach, an arabinan-containing polysaccharide was purified from pea fiber, its structure defined, and forward genetic and proteomic analyses used to compare its effects, versus unfractionated pea fiber and sugar beet arabinan, on a human gut bacterial strain consortium in gnotobiotic mice. We produced Microbiota Functional Activity Biosensors (MFABs) consisting of glycans covalently-linked to the surface of fluorescent paramagnetic microscopic glass beads. Three MFABs, each containing a unique glycan/fluorophore combination, were simultaneously orally gavaged into gnotobiotic mice, recovered from their intestines, and analyzed to directly quantify bacterial metabolism of structurally distinct arabinans in different human diet contexts. Colocalizing pea-fiber arabinan and another polysaccharide (glucomannan) on the bead surface enhanced in vivo metabolism of glucomannan. MFABs represent a potentially versatile platform for developing new prebiotics and more nutritious foods.

microbiology↗