Background: Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) may be caused in part by aberrant immune responses to commensal intestinal microbes including Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron (B.theta). Healthy, germ-free HLA-B27 transgenic (Tg) rats develop chronic colitis when colonized with complex gut commensal bacteria whereas non-transgenic (nTg) rats remain disease-free. However, the role of B.theta, a well-characterized anaerobic commensal bacterium, in causing disease in Tg rats is unknown nor is much known about how microbes respond to host inflammation. Methods: Tg and nTg rats were monoassociated with a human isolate of B.theta. Colonic inflammation was quantified by blinded histological scoring and real-time RT-PCR assays of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Cecal bacterial concentrations were measured by quantitative plating. Whole genome transcriptional profiling of B.theta recovered from ceca was performed using custom GeneChips and data analyzed using dChip, Significance Analysis of Microarrays, and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) software. Results: B.theta monoassociated Tg rats had significantly more colonic inflammation and increased colonic levels of pro-inflammatory cytokine mRNAs compared to nTg controls. Transcriptional profiles of cecal B.theta were significantly different in Tg vs. nTg rats. GSEA revealed that the Gene Ontology molecular function of receptor activity, which is comprised mainly of genes that encode nutrient binding proteins, was significantly enriched with genes upregulated in B.theta from Tg rats. KEGG canonical pathways of ribosome, oxidative phosphorylation, pyrimidine metabolism, purine metabolism, peptidoglycan biosynthesis, and metabolism were significantly enriched with genes downregulated in B.theta from Tg rats. Numbers of viable bacteria/gram cecal contents in Tg vs. nTg rats were not significantly different. Conclusions: B.theta induces mild colitis in HLA-B27 Tg rats, which is associated with changes in the expression of microbial metabolic and nutrient binding pathways, but no difference in concentrations of luminal bacteria. Mechanistic studies of differentially expressed B.theta genes may reveal novel pathways that contribute to IBD. The fully-sequenced human fecal isolate of B.theta (VPI-5482) was grown on Brain-Heart Infusion (BHI) agar and in BHI broth under strict anaerobic conditions using pre-reduced media. Adult germ-free HLA-B27/b2 microglobulin transgenic rats and adult germ-free non-transgenic littermate were monoassociated with B.theta for six weeks in gnotobiotic isolators at the National Gnotobiotic Rodent Resource Center at UNC Chapel Hill. Bacterial RNA was isolated from rat cecal contents and hybridized on Affymetrix human gut microbiota community GeneChip.