Compound Fu brick tea modifies the intestinal microbiome composition in high-fat diet-induced obesity mice

Abstract

Compound Fu Brick Tea (CFBT), which is from Duyun city in China, is a traditional Chinese dark tea, Fu Brick Tea, mixed with six herbal medicine. It is consumed by local people for reducing weight, but the mechanism is not clear. The disorder of intestinal microbiome caused by long-term high-fat diet (HFD) is one of the inducements of obesity and related metabolic syndrome. In this study, mice were fed with HFD to establish a high-fat model. Fifty mice were randomly divided into six groups: normal control (CK), HFD model control (NK), positive control with medicine (YK), CFBT groups with low, middle, and high dose (FL, FM, FH). The V3-V4 DNA region of fecal microbiome from mouse intestine was sequenced. The results showed that the diversity of intestinal microflora was highest in CK and lowest in NK. Compared with CK, the dominant bacterium Firmicutes was increased and Bacteroidetes decreased at phylum level in NK. Compared with NK, the abundance of microbiome in CFBT groups was significantly higher and the composition was changed: Muribaculaceae, Bacteroidaceae, and Prevotellaceae increased and Lachnospiraceae decreased in CFBT groups at family level, while at the genus level, Bacteroides increased and Lactobacillus decreased. These results conclude that CFBT can increase the abundance of intestinal microbiome in mice, promote the growth of beneficial bacteria and reduce the number of pathogenic bacteria, and restore the imbalance of intestinal microbiome caused by poor diet.

Keywords: compound Fu brick tea; high‐fat diet; high‐throughput sequencing; intestinal microbiota.

Figure 1

Venn plot of OTUs. Each petal represents a group, the numbers on the petals represent the numbers of species unique to the group, and the white circle in the middle represents the number of species shared by all groups

Figure 2

Rarefaction curves of OTUs. The abscissa is the number of effective sequences per sample and the ordinate is the number of observed OTUs. The curves reflect the increasing speed and trend of new species observed with the increase of sequencing depth in the process of sequencing samples

Figure 3

Alpha diversity illustrates the difference between samples. (a) Chao1 index; (b) Shannon index. The box chart represents the minimum value, the lower quartile, the median, the upper quartile, and the maximum value from the bottom to the top

Figure 4

PCoA diagram of samples at the genus level of intestinal microbiota

Figure 5

UPGMA‐tree diagram of samples

Figure 6

Changes of microbiome structure and abundance at phylum level

Figure 7

Changes of microbiome structure and abundance at family level

Figure 8

Changes of microbiome structure and abundance at genus level

Figure 9

LEfSE diagram of the significant taxonomies between groups. The vertical coordinate is the taxa with significant differences between groups, and the horizontal coordinate is the bar graph to show the LDA difference analysis of each species group. The scores (LDA value is greater than 3) are sorted according to the scores, so as to describe their differences in different groups of samples. The longer the length is, the more significant the difference is. The different colors of the bar chart indicate the sample groups with higher abundance