Xingshen Sun, Alicia K Olivier, Yaling Yi, Christopher E Pope, Hillary S Hayden, Bo Liang, Hongshu Sui, Weihong Zhou, Kyle R Hager, Yulong Zhang, Xiaoming Liu, Ziying Yan, John T Fisher, Nicholas W Keiser, Yi Song, Scott R Tyler, J Adam Goeken, Joann M Kinyon, Matthew C Radey, Danielle Fligg, Xiaoyan Wang, Weiliang Xie, Thomas J Lynch, Paul M Kaminsky, Mitchell J Brittnacher, Samuel I Miller, Kalpaj Parekh, David K Meyerholz, Lucas R Hoffman, Timothy Frana, Zoe A Stewart, John F Engelhardt
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a multiorgan disease caused by loss of a functional cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) chloride channel in many epithelia of the body. Here we report the pathology observed in the gastrointestinal organs of juvenile to adult CFTR-knockout ferrets. CF gastrointestinal manifestations included gastric ulceration, intestinal bacterial overgrowth with villous atrophy, and rectal prolapse. Metagenomic phylogenetic analysis of fecal microbiota by deep sequencing revealed considerable genotype-independent microbial diversity between animals, with the majority of taxa overlapping between CF and non-CF pairs...
May 2014: American Journal of Pathology