Heterogolous FMT Facilitates Post-Antibiotics Microbiota Restoration but Does Not Guarantee Long-Term Maintenance in Aged Mice

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), a procedure to transfer fecal material from a donor to a recipient, has been shown to be an effective method to restore a healthy gut microbiota. However, the choice of donors may affect the therapeutic effects. Little is known about how the matching between donors and recipients influence the efficacy and long-term maintenance after FMT. In this study, we treated aged mice (20-month-old) with antibiotics and demonstrated that the gut microbiota diversity decreased significantly and did not recover to the original state. We carried out heterologous FMT for aged mice following antibiotics treatment from donors of different ages and found that heterologous FMT facilitated the restoration of microbiota diversity. For the recipient mice, we found that their long-term microbiota composition and gene expression profiles in colon were affected by the FMT donor. Furthermore, we tested whether the microbiota after FMT could remain stable under perturbations of colonic inflammation. We found that although recipient microbiota closely resembled the donor composition after FMT, the matching between donors and recipients is important for the long-term maintenance. Our study revealed the long-term effects of FMT on the microbiota of aged mice, suggesting that the matching between donors and recipients should be taken into account when FMT were implemented.