This review explores the century-long trajectory of gut microbiome research and its contribution to shaping our modern diet. It further highlights the transformative potential of current discoveries to revolutionize future dietary habits and nutritional practices. From the pioneering work of E.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJMIR Res Protoc
July 2025
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View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Emerging research suggests that diet plays a vital role in shaping the composition and function of the gut microbiota. Although substantial efforts have been made to identify general patterns linking diet to the gut microbiome, much of this research has been concentrated on a small number of countries. Additionally, both diet and the gut microbiome have highly complex and individualized configurations, and there is growing evidence that tailoring diets to individual gut microbiota profiles may optimize the path toward improving or maintaining health and preventing disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol
August 2025
The gut microbiome has an undeniable role in mediating the health effects of the diet, given its ability to co-digest nutrients and influence nutrient signalling to multiple organ systems. As a suboptimal diet is a major risk factor for and contributor to disease, understanding the multidirectional interactions between the food we eat, the gut microbiome and the different body organ systems is crucial from a public health perspective. Indeed, this research area is leading to the refinement of nutritional concepts and strategies to optimize health through diet.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJMIR Res Protoc
May 2025
Background: Over the past 2 decades, the gut microbiota has emerged as a key player in human health, being involved in many different clinical contexts. Yet, many aspects of the relationship with its host are poorly documented. One obstacle is the substantial variability in wet-laboratory procedures and data processing implemented during gut microbiota studies, which poses a challenge of comparability and potential meta-analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe gut microbiome is important for human health, yet modulation requires more insight into inter-individual variation. Here, we explored latent structures of the human gut microbiome across the human lifespan, applying partitioning, pseudotime, and ordination approaches to >35,000 samples. Specifically, three major gut microbiome branches were identified, within which multiple partitions were observed in adulthood, with differential abundances of species along branches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProbiotics have been used for decades to alleviate the negative side-effects of oral antibiotics, but our mechanistic understanding on how they work is so far incomplete. Here, we performed a metagenomic analysis of the fecal microbiota in participants who underwent a 14-d eradication therapy with or without consumption of a multi-strain probiotic intervention ( CNCM I-1518, CNCM I-3689, CNCM I-3690, and four yogurt strains) in a randomized, double-blinded, controlled clinical trial. Using a strain-level analysis for detection and metagenomic determination of replication rate, ingested strains were detected and replicated transiently in fecal samples and in the gut during and following antibiotic administration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComput Struct Biotechnol J
April 2022
Healthy plant-based diets rich in fermentable residues may induce gas-related symptoms, possibly mediated by the gut microbiota. We previously showed that consumption of a fermented milk product (FMP) containing Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis CNCM I-2494 and lactic acid bacteria improved gastrointestinal (GI) comfort in response to a flatulogenic dietary challenge in healthy individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Yoghurt contains live bacteria that could contribute via modulation of the gut microbiota to its reported beneficial effects such as reduced body weight gain and lower incidence of type 2 diabetes. To date, the association between yoghurt consumption and the composition of the gut microbiota is underexplored. Here we used clinical variables, metabolomics, 16S rRNA and shotgun metagenomic sequencing data collected on over 1000 predominantly female UK twins to define the link between the gut microbiota and yoghurt-associated health benefits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Individual diet components and specific dietary regimens have been shown to impact the gut microbiome.
Objectives: Here, we explored the contribution of long-term diet by searching for dietary patterns that would best associate with the gut microbiome in a population-based cohort.
Methods: Using a priori and a posteriori approaches, we constructed dietary patterns from an FFQ completed by 1800 adults in the American Gut Project.
Lifestyle factors, such as diet, strongly influence the structure, diversity, and composition of the microbiome. While we have witnessed over the last several years a resurgence of interest in fermented foods, no study has specifically explored the effects of their consumption on gut microbiota in large cohorts. To assess whether the consumption of fermented foods is associated with a systematic signal in the gut microbiome and metabolome, we used a multi-omic approach (16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, metagenomic sequencing, and untargeted mass spectrometry) to analyze stool samples from 6,811 individuals from the American Gut Project, including 115 individuals specifically recruited for their frequency of fermented food consumption for a targeted 4-week longitudinal study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDietary lipids favor the growth of the pathobiont Bilophila wadsworthia, but the relevance of this expansion in metabolic syndrome pathogenesis is poorly understood. Here, we showed that B. wadsworthia synergizes with high fat diet (HFD) to promote higher inflammation, intestinal barrier dysfunction and bile acid dysmetabolism, leading to higher glucose dysmetabolism and hepatic steatosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Biotechnol
November 2017
Technical variation in metagenomic analysis must be minimized to confidently assess the contributions of microbiota to human health. Here we tested 21 representative DNA extraction protocols on the same fecal samples and quantified differences in observed microbial community composition. We compared them with differences due to library preparation and sample storage, which we contrasted with observed biological variation within the same specimen or within an individual over time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFModern life is associated with changes in gut microbial communities, believed to be involved in the emergence of non-communicable chronic diseases. While there is an increasing effort of the scientific community towards designing microbiota-targeting therapies aiming to restore the microbiota of diseased patients, there is a lack of approaches designed to prevent the disruption of the symbiosis between human and its microbial symbionts. We discuss in this review how new technologies, tools and models will contribute to identify diet-derived health-relevant microbial metabolites, possible targets for dietary recommendations tailored to individuals' physiology, diet, genetics, lifestyle and gut microbiota.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2017
Hosts and their microbes have established a sophisticated communication system over many millennia. Within mammalian hosts, this dynamic cross-talk is essential for maintaining intestinal homeostasis. In a genetically susceptible host, dysbiosis of the gut microbiome and dysregulated immune responses are central to the development of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe spread of the Western lifestyle has been accompanied by microbial changes thought to underlie the emergence of chronic, nontransmissible, immune-related diseases. The past decade has seen the unprecedented development of therapies for 'replenishing' the microbiota of sick individuals. However, functional and ecological solutions helping the host and the gut microbiota to cope with the ecological stressors of modern life are still lacking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo ensure optimal cell growth and separation and to adapt to environmental parameters, bacteria have to maintain a balance between cell wall (CW) rigidity and flexibility. This can be achieved by a concerted action of peptidoglycan (PG) hydrolases and PG-synthesizing/modifying enzymes. In a search for new regulatory mechanisms responsible for the maintenance of this equilibrium in Lactococcus lactis, we isolated mutants that are resistant to the PG hydrolase lysozyme.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResident gut microbes co-exist with transient bacteria to form the gut microbiota. Despite increasing evidence suggesting a role for transient microbes on gut microbiota function, the interplay between resident and transient members of this microbial community is poorly defined. We aimed to determine the extent to which a host's autochthonous gut microbiota influences niche permissivity to transient bacteria using a fermented milk product (FMP) as a vehicle for five food-borne bacterial strains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBeneficial microbes that target molecules and pathways, such as oxidative stress, which can negatively affect both host and microbiota, may hold promise as an inflammatory bowel disease therapy. Prior work showed that a five-strain fermented milk product (FMP) improved colitis in T-bet(-/-) Rag2(-/-) mice. By varying the number of strains used in the FMP, we found that Lactococcus lactis I-1631 was sufficient to ameliorate colitis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe gut microbiota (GM) consists of resident commensals and transient microbes conveyed by the diet but little is known about the role of the latter on GM homeostasis. Here we show, by a conjunction of quantitative metagenomics, in silico genome reconstruction and metabolic modeling, that consumption of a fermented milk product containing dairy starters and Bifidobacterium animalis potentiates colonic short chain fatty acids production and decreases abundance of a pathobiont Bilophila wadsworthia compared to a milk product in subjects with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS, n = 28). The GM changes parallel improvement of IBS state, suggesting a role of the fermented milk bacteria in gut homeostasis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDysregulated immune responses to gut microbes are central to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and gut microbial activity can fuel chronic inflammation. Examining how IBD-directed therapies influence gut microbiomes may identify microbial community features integral to mitigating disease and maintaining health. However, IBD patients often receive multiple treatments during disease flares, confounding such analyses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdaptation of cells to environmental changes requires dynamic interactions between metabolic and regulatory networks, but studies typically address only one or a few layers of regulation. For nutritional shifts between two preferred carbon sources of Bacillus subtilis, we combined statistical and model-based data analyses of dynamic transcript, protein, and metabolite abundances and promoter activities. Adaptation to malate was rapid and primarily controlled posttranscriptionally compared with the slow, mainly transcriptionally controlled adaptation to glucose that entailed nearly half of the known transcription regulation network.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFermentation of food components by microbes occurs both during certain food production processes and in the gastro-intestinal tract. In these processes specific compounds are produced that originate from either biotransformation reactions or biosynthesis, and that can affect the health of the consumer. In this review, we summarize recent advances highlighting the potential to improve the nutritional status of a fermented food by rational choice of food-fermenting microbes.
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