Synthetic diets containing a single polysaccharide disrupt gut microbial community structure and microbial interaction networks in the American cockroach.

Cockroaches are unusual but effective model organisms for understanding how the gut microbiome reacts to dietary changes. Previously, research in the cockroach gut microbiome demonstrated surprisingly robust stability following extreme dietary shifts using whole foods, but our work uncovers the potential of synthetic diets to induce change in these stable communities. The observation that diets enriched in purified polysaccharides reduced gut microbiome stability and undermined microbial interaction networks has important implications for the use of prebiotics to induce targeted changes in gut microbiome composition and structure.