| Summary: | <i>Saccharina japonica</i> polysaccharides exhibit great potential to be developed as anti-obesity and prebiotic health products, but the underlying mechanism has not been adequately addressed. In this study, we investigated the potential mechanism of a <i>S. japonica</i> polysaccharide fraction (SjC) in preventing high-fat-diet (HFD)-induced obesity in mice using 16S rRNA gene and shotgun metagenomic sequencing analysis. SjC was characterized as a 756 kDa sulfated polysaccharide and 16 weeks of SjC supplementation significantly alleviated HFD-induced obesity, insulin resistance, and glucose metabolism disorders. The 16S rRNA and metagenomic sequencing analysis demonstrated that SjC supplementation prevented gut microbiota dysbiosis mainly by regulating the relative abundance of <i>Desulfovibrio</i> and <i>Akkermansia</i>. Metagenomic functional profiling demonstrated that SjC treatment predominantly suppressed the amino acid metabolism of gut microbiota. Linking of 16S rRNA genes with metagenome-assembled genomes indicated that SjC enriched at least 22 gut bacterial species with fucoidan-degrading potential including <i>Desulfovibrio</i> and <i>Akkermansia,</i> which showed significant correlations with bodyweight. In conclusion, our results suggest that SjC exhibits a promising potential as an anti-obesity health product and the interaction between SjC and fucoidan-degrading bacteria may be associated with its anti-obesity effect.
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