Dietary factors, affect Akkermansia muciniphila (AM) abundance in the colon, have attracted attention, driven by the inverse correlation between AM abundance and metabolic disorders. We prepared skate-skin mucin (SM), porcine stomach mucin (PM), and rat gastrointestinal mucin (RM). SM contained more sulfated sugars and threonine than PM or RM. Rats were fed a control diet or diets including SM, PM, or RM (15 g/kg), or SM (12 g/kg) from 5 different threonine contents for 14 d. Cecal total bacteria and AM were less and more numerous, respectively, in SM-fed rats than the others, but SM did not affect microbial species richness. Low-threonine SM did not induce AM proliferation. The in vitro fermentation with human feces showed that the rate of AM increase was greater with SM than PM. Collectively, heavy SM sulfation facilitates a priority supply of SM-derived amino sugars and threonine that promotes AM proliferation in rats and human feces.
Keywords: Akkermansia; porcine stomach mucin; rat gastrointestinal mucin; skate-skin mucin; sulfated sugars.
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry.