Effects of Conditional Gene Knockout Inducer Tamoxifen on the Composition of Mice Gut Microbiota
Tamoxifen is a selective estrogen receptor modulator.In addition to being used in treatment for breast cancer,it also acts as a spatial-temporal switch in the inducible Cre-loxP gene knockout system.Gut microbiota is closely related to physiological conditions of the hosts,such as intestinal absorption,metabolism,developmental diseases and cancer.Tamoxifen-induced specific gene knockout has become a popular method to explore the interaction between microbiota and host genes.Tamoxifen injection can cause estrogen receptor-mediated toxicity,which may interfere the physiological status of the hosts.However,whether tamoxifen injection has an impact on the gut microbiota stability in mice remains unclear.In this study,we injected tamoxifen to C57 BL/6J wild type mice following the protocol commonly used for gene conditional knockout and explored the effect of tamoxifen injection.The results showed that there was no significant difference in body weight,intestinal structure and morphology as well as the intestinal barrier between tamoxifen-injected group and control group.However,tamoxifen administration did have an impact on the microbial abundance in the fecal and cecal contents of the mice.Our work indicates that when using tamoxifen to induce conditional gene knockout in mice,it is necessary to take into account the potential impact of tamoxifen on the gut microbiota and minimize any potential interference that may arise.
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