Arsenic Exposure Perturbs the Gut Microbiome and Its Metabolic Profile in Mice: An Integrated Metagenomics and Metabolomics Analysis

Background: The human intestine is host to an enormously complex, diverse, and vast microbial community—the gut microbiota. The gut microbiome plays a profound role in metabolic processing, energy production, immune and cognitive development, epithelial homeostasis, and so forth. However, the composition and diversity of the gut microbiome can be readily affected by external factors, which raises the possibility that exposure to toxic environmental chemicals leads to gut microbiome alteration, or dysbiosis. Arsenic exposure affects large human populations worldwide and has been linked to a number of diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorders