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. 2024 Apr 25;15:3502. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-47594-w

Fig. 6. Blautia coccoides stimulates mucus growth through short-chain fatty acid production.

Fig. 6

A PLS-DA of mucus metabolites. WSD-fed mice (n = 10) were supplemented with B. coccoides (red, n = 6) or control media (blue, n = 4) through drinking water. B Unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis using Euclidian distance measurements of the 25 most altered metabolites. Color scale indicates fold change in normalized peak intensity. C Peak area of altered SCFAs, hexanoate and heptanoate. D Spearman correlation between colonic mucus growth rate and SCFAs, hexanoate and heptanoate peak intensity in mucus of individual mice. E Spearman correlation between colonic mucus growth rate and SCFAs, hexanoate and heptanoate peak intensity in the cecum of WSD-fed mice transplanted with human microbiota. F Ex vivo mucus growth rate in distal colon tissue explants with supplementation of propionate, G supernatant of a 24 h B. coccoides culture (n = 5) and (H) supernatant of a 24 h cecal community supplemented with B. coccoides (n = 6), with respective controls. I Quantification of acetate and propionate in supernatant of a 24 h B. coccoides culture (n = 3) and (J) supernatant of a 24 h cecal community supplemented with B. coccoides (n = 3). K Ex vivo stimulation of distal colon tissue explants with acetate as described above (n = 6 mice/group). L Fold change in acetate and propionate peak area in supernatants of a 48 h B. coccoides culture incubated in GAM media supplemented with fucose (control n = 2; supernatant n = 3). M Ex vivo stimulation and mucus growth measurement of colonic tissue stimulated with acetate or propionate, with and without a Ffar2 chemical antagonist (n = 5), N with a chemical agonist of Ffar2 (n = 5) and (O) with supernatant of a 24–48 h B. coccoides culture with and without a Ffar2 chemical antagonist (n = 5). Statistical significance was determined by Kruskal‒Wallis test and Dunn’s multiple comparisons test (F, K) or Mann‒Whitney U test (C, G, H, L, M, N, O). Normal distribution of the data was tested with the D’Agostino & Pearson test, and data are presented as mean ± SD with p < 0.05 (*) and p < 0.01 (**) considered statistically significant. All P values are two-sided. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.