%0 Journal Article %A Bei-di Chen %A Xin-miao Jia %A Jia-yue Xu %A Li-dan Zhao %A Jun-yi Ji %A Bing-xuan Wu %A Yun-yun Fei %A Hua-xia Yang %A Hua Chen %A Xiao-xia Zuo %A Hui Li %A Wen-you Pan %A Xiao-han Wang %A Shuang Ye %A Dong-geng Guo %A Li Wang %A Jing Li %A Lin-yi Peng %A Wen-jie Zheng %A Wen Zhang %A Feng-chun Zhang %A Jian-min Zhang %A Wei He %A Xue-tao Cao %A De-pei Liu %A Jun Wang %A Xuan Zhang %T Proinflammatory and autoimmunogenic gut microbiome in systemic lupus erythematosus %D 2019 %R 10.1101/621995 %J bioRxiv %P 621995 %X Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), characterized by chronic inflammation and multi-organ damage, has been suggested to associate with gut dysbiosis, but knowledge is limited from small sample size and 16s rRNA-based studies. To shed new light on the role of microbiota in SLE development, we analyzed the fecal metagenome of 117 treatment-naïve SLE patients and 115 sex- and age-matched healthy controls (HC) by deep-sequencing; in addition, 52 of the aforementioned patients have post-treatment fecal metagenome for comparison. We found significant differences in microbial composition and function between SLE and HC, revealing multiple plausible contributing bacterial species and metabolic pathways in SLE. In-depth SNP-based analysis revealed an oral-microbiome origin for two marker species, strengthening the importance of bacterial translocation in disease development. Lastly, we confirmed experimentally that peptides of SLE-enriched species mimicking autoantigens such as Sm and Fas could trigger autoimmune responses, suggesting a potential causal role of gut microbiota in SLE. %U https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/04/29/621995.full.pdf