Stress-Induced Mucin 13 Reductions Drive Intestinal Microbiome Shifts and Despair Behaviors

Depression is a prevalent psychological condition with limited treatment options. While its etiology is multifactorial, both chronic stress and changes in the microbiome are associated with disease pathology. In depression, stress is known to induce microbiome dysbiosis, defined here as a change in microbial composition associated with a pathological condition. This state of dysbiosis is then known to feedback on depressive symptoms. While studies have demonstrated that targeted restoration of the microbiome can alleviate depressive-like symptoms in mice, translating these findings to human patients has proven challenging due to the complexity of the human microbiome. As such, there is an urgent need to identify factors upstream of microbial dysbiosis. Here we investigate the role of mucin 13 as an upstream mediator of microbiome composition changes. Using a model of chronic stress, we show that the mucosal protein, mucin 13, is selectively reduced after psychological stress exposure. We further demonstrate that the reduction of Muc13 is mediated by the Hnf4 transcription factor family. Finally, we determine that deleting Muc13 is sufficient to drive microbiome shifts and despair behaviors. These findings shed light on the mechanisms behind stress-induced microbial changes and reveal a regulator of mucin 13 expression. Summary In this paper, authors identified a pathway by which stress induces microbiome shifts. They found that psychological stress selectively alters a key mucosal protein, mucin 13, which in turn modifies the microbial niche to induce changes in bacterial composition.