It could be hypothesized that, from its gut microbial community

composition, the healthy larvae may have been more likely AZD8931 to format a stable micro-ecosystem with the intestinal environment, the gut epithelium and the mucosal immune system, therefore, less susceptible of developing IBD. Most studies suggest that the gut microbiota is an important factor in the pathogenesis of IBD, however, little is known about the contributions of particular intestinal species to health and disease. Recently, increasingly molecular profiling techniques are being employed for the detection and characterization of the unculturable bacteria in the human colon. Studies based on DGGE have shown a faecal microbiota dysbiosis signature associated with CD, characterised by a decreased presence of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Bifidobacterium adolescentis, Dialister invisus, an unknown Clostridium sp. and an increased GW3965 in vivo presence of Ruminococcus gnavus[24]. Others revealed that Bacteroides vulgatus, Bacteroides uniformis, and Parabacteroides sp. were more commonly present at higher levels in healthy controls than in UC or IBD patients [25]. The changes of the intestinal microbiota in IBD patients were not only investigated in Western population, but also a research on the faecal bacterial dysbiosis in Chinese CD patients showing an increase of the richness γ-Proteobacteria (especially

Escherichia coli and Shigella flexneri) and a reduced proportion

of Bacteroides and Firmicutes[26]. Such differences were also observed by others applying terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) mafosfamide and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) [27–29]. In murine models of IBD, Bacteroidales (Bacteroides sp., Alistipes, Butyricimonas, Odoribacter, and Parabacteroides sp.) and Lactobacillus sp. were predominantly associated with the DSS-induced colitic and healthy rats, respectively [30]. Obviously, there were significant differences between the experimental sets from which samples were sourced. This may be caused by many factors including genetics, variations in environmental conditions from different geographic locations, as well as the microbiological status of food and water. Ro 61-8048 Despite these differences, most of the studies have shown an increase of some opportunistic pathogenic Proteobacteria and a decreased proportion of Firmicutes phylum in CD, UC, or IBD. The role of the microbiota in the zebrafish larval TNBS model has not been previously described. Our results showed that the dominant bacterial species were altered in the larvae intestine with TNBS-induced IBD, which was characterized by an overrepresentation of Proteobacteria and a relative lack of Firmicutes phylum. We observed that Limnobacter sp., Comamonas sp. and Salmonella sp.