Akkermansia muciniphila MucT harnesses dietary polyphenols as xenosiderophores for enhanced iron uptake
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Dietary proanthocyanidins (PACs) are polyphenols that promote a healthy gut microbiome. PACs are notable for their rich catechol moieties with high affinity for iron, enabling them to interfere with pathogens’ iron uptake. PACs selectively increase the abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila, a symbiont known for supporting metabolic and immune health. We discovered that A. muciniphila MucT utilizes distinct iron-acquisition systems to take up iron sequestered by PACs, supporting its metabolic activity. Integrative proteomics and transcriptomics revealed that A. muciniphila has an active catechol-type siderophore-mediated iron uptake (Fe3+) system, involving membrane ATP-binding cassette transporters and lipocalins. Simultaneously, the expression of ferrous iron (Fe2+) transporters, zinc uptake, and iron storage proteins was upregulated. Administering iron-laden PACs in an iron-depleted medium restored the A. muciniphila growth to levels comparable to those in iron-amended conditions. This was associated with an increased expression of the A. muciniphila siderophore operon and lipocalin genes, indicating that iron-laden PACs are recognized as xenosiderophores to cope with iron depletion. Hence, we identified novel signaling mechanisms for iron acquisition and siderophore uptake regulation in A. muciniphila MucT upon exposure to PACs, enhancing our understanding of the role of dietary PACs in selectively promoting this gut symbiont and potentially outcompeting pathogenic bacteria. Dietary proanthocyanidins (PACs) increase the abundance of gut symbiont Akkermansia muciniphila. Here, the authors show that strain MucT employs distinct iron-acquisition systems to take up iron sequestered by PACs, supporting its metabolic activity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".