# High-throughput surveillance of gut mucosal polysaccharides

> **NIH NIH R21** · PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV HERSHEY MED CTR · 2020 · $237,480

## Abstract

Project Summary
The gut microbiota is a dense polymicrobial consortium housed in the mammalian gastrointestinal tract that
participates in human development, health and disease. The taxonomic composition of the microbiota changes
during the progression of many different intestinal diseases including inflammatory bowel disease and
colorectal cancers. While the causes underlying disease-associated microbiota changes are unclear, diseased
tissues exhibit altered production of mucosal polysaccharides, which serve as nutrients for the microbiota. We
hypothesize that changes in mucosal polysaccharide identity and abundance facilitate alterations in the
microbiota composition by favoring or disfavoring the expansion of various gut taxa that specialize in the
utilization of various mucosal polysaccharides. However, identifying such changes in mucosal polysaccharide
content and abundance is limited by the absence of rapid and efficient methods to monitor fractionated
polysaccharide preparations extracted from human mucosal samples. Fortuitously, some microbiota members
residing in the gut have evolved specialized sensor proteins that detect specific complex polysaccharide
structures and direct rapid and dramatic changes in gene expression. These sensors can distinguish between
compositionally similar yet structurally distinct polysaccharides and are activated even when their cognate
ligand is present in relatively low abundance in a heterogenous polysaccharide mixture. Here, we harness the
specificity of these polysaccharide sensors to develop arrayed reporter libraries that employ gut microbes to
evaluate changes in mucosal polysaccharide content in heterogenous mixtures. This work will develop a high-
throughput surveillance system to define the polysaccharide content of the gut mucosa, efficiently monitor
fractionation of complex polysaccharide mixtures and assign bacterial gene content to the utilization of
individual polysaccharides. Ultimately, this toolset will unveil how intestinal diseases promote changes in the
microbiota composition and output, identify putative disease biomarkers and offer valuable insight into the
inter-kingdom interactions governing the human gut microbiota.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9874874
- **Project number:** 1R21AI149319-01
- **Recipient organization:** PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV HERSHEY MED CTR
- **Principal Investigator:** Guy Edmund Townsend
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $237,480
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-02-01 → 2022-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9874874

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9874874, High-throughput surveillance of gut mucosal polysaccharides (1R21AI149319-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9874874. Licensed CC0.

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