Metabolomic Study of Aging in fa/fa Rats: Multiplatform Urine and Serum Analysis

Abstract

Zucker fatty (fa/fa) rats represent a well-established and widely used model of genetic obesity. Because previous metabolomic studies have only been published for young fa/fa rats up to 20 weeks of age, which can be considered early maturity in male fa/fa rats, the aim of our work was to extend the metabolomic characterization to significantly older animals. Therefore, the urinary profiles of obese fa/fa rats and their lean controls were monitored using untargeted NMR metabolomics between 12 and 40 weeks of age. At the end of the experiment, the rats were also characterized by NMR and LC-MS serum analysis, which was supplemented by a targeted LC-MS analysis of serum bile acids and neurotransmitters. The urine analysis showed that most of the characteristic differences detected in young obese fa/fa rats persisted throughout the experiment, primarily through a decrease in microbial co-metabolite levels, the upregulation of the citrate cycle, and changes in nicotinamide metabolism compared with the age-related controls. The serum of 40-week-old obese rats showed a reduction in several bile acid conjugates and an increase in serotonin. Our study demonstrated that the fa/fa model of genetic obesity is stable up to 40 weeks of age and is therefore suitable for long-term experiments.

Microbiome profiling and Co-metabolism pathway analysis in cervical cancer patients with acute radiation enteritis

“…Its major advantages are as follows: (1) capable of dynamically analyzing the overall composition of metabolites, including feces, urine, blood, and secretions and cells of the body; (2) high accuracy, high sensitivity, and high throughput; and (3) based on multivariate statistical analysis methods, it can intuitively illustrate the pathological and physiological status of the research object, environmental factors, and the relationships between various groups of information, and obtain biomarkers [ 13 , 14 ]. This approach can explain the basic form of gut microbial metabolism and more accurately analyze the metabolic system, and consequently, the results obtained with this approach can help study the relationship between gut microbiota and the host [ [15] , [16] , [17] ].…”