ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Systems Microbiology
Effect of IFN-τ on intestinal flora and metabolomics of Escherichia coli-mediated endometritis in mice
Provisionally accepted
- Tarim University, Alar, Xinjiang, China
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Endometritis is a common reproductive disease in dairy cows, which can lead to low fertility or infertility and cause significant economic losses to the dairy farming industry. IFN-τ is a type I interferon that may exert significant anti-inflammatory effects in inflammatory diseases. With breakthroughs in microbial mapping sequencing and metabolomics, the role between gut flora and host metabolism and disease has been revealed from a completely new perspective. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of IFN-τ in a mouse model of E. coli-induced endometritis by 16S rRNA sequencing and LC-MS untargeted metabolomics, the results showed that IFN-τ could affect the flora structure of the mouse intestine. The E. coli-induced endometritis in mice was found to be associated with five different metabolites and three potential metabolic pathways by LC-MS non-targeted metabolomics, which were the major players in the metabolic pathways, namely Arginine biosynthesis, Pyruvate metabolism, Arginine and proline metabolism. This may be an important metabolic pathway for IFN-τ intervention in endometritis mice. Combining the results of gut flora and metabolomics analyses suggest that changes in metabolic pathways may be influenced by gut flora. We hypothesize that IFN-τ is likely to exert its anti-inflammatory effects by regulating the levels of Oscillospira and Clostridium flora in the gut, which in turn affects the expression of five differential metabolites in uterine tissues.
Keywords: Endometritis, IFN-τ, Microbiome analysis, untargeted metabolomics, Gutflora
Received: 18 Aug 2025; Accepted: 23 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Zhang, Chen, Tang, Xu, Wang, Zhang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Junfeng Liu, lifdky@126.com
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