Investigation on rat intestinal homeostasis alterations induced by 7-day simulated microgravity effect based on a proteomic approach

The present study aims at investigating alterations of rat intestinal homeostasis induced by 7-day simulated microgravity (SMG) effect through a proteomic approach. Tail-suspension model was used to simulate microgravity effect and a label-free quantitative proteomic strategy was employed to determine proteins in rat intestine. As a result, 717 differently expressed proteins were identified and 29 proteins were down-regulated while 688 proteins were up-regulated. 283 out of 717 proteins were categorized into 7 clusters with DAVID (version 6.8). The three highest enrichment scores were annotation cluster I about cell-cell adhesion (46 proteins with enrichment score of 16.67), annotation cluster II about carbohydrate metabolism (32 proteins with enrichment score of 6.17) and annotation cluster III about activity of pepdtidase (17 proteins with enrichment score of 4.74). Results of rat intestine proteomics indicate that SMG might disrupt intestinal homeostasis, which possibly resulted in opening of intestinal epithelial barrier (IEB), potentially leading to risk of systemic inflammatory response (SIR) and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). The present results also provide some useful information for mechanism and countermeasures of intestine injuries induced by microgravity.