Removal of the cecum affects intestinal fermentation, enteric bacterial community structure, and acute colitis in mice
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The murine cecum is a major site of fermentation of dietary materials, and production of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs). To examine the role that the cecum plays in acute bacterial infection in mice, the cecum was surgically removed, and changes in bacterial communities and production of SCFAs were analyzed relative to surgical sham animals. To incite bacterial colitis, mice were orally challenged with Citrobacter rodentium. The impact of butyrate administered directly into the colon was also examined. Concentrations of SCFAs in feces were substantially lower in mice with an excised cecum. Bacterial communities were also less diverse in cecectomized mice, and densities of major SCFA-producing taxa including bacteria within the Ruminococcaceae and Lachnospiraceae families were reduced. Colonization of the intestine by C. rodentium was not affected by removal of the cecum, and the bacterium equally incited acute colitis in mice with and without a cecum. However, cecectomized mice exhibited lower body weights at later stages of infection indicating an impaired ability to recover following challenge with C. rodentium. Furthermore, removal of the cecum altered immune and inflammatory responses to infection including increased inflammatory markers in the proximal colon (Tnfα, Il10, βd1), and heightened inflammatory response in the proximal and distal colon (Ifnγ, Tnfα, Relmβ). Exogenous administration of butyrate was insufficient to normalize responses to C. rodentium in cecectomized mice. The murine cecum plays a critical role in maintaining intestinal health, and the murine cecectomy model may be a useful tool in elucidating key aspects of intestine-pathogen-microbiota interactions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".