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CORVALLIS, Oregon – Researchers at Oregon State University have made significant progress in understanding the role of intestinal bacteria in human health.
Learning the mechanisms by which intestinal microbes affect the health of their hosts opens the door to the development of better, more personalized diagnostic methods and therapies.
So far, most studies have focused on how the composition of the microbiome – that is, what organisms are present and how much – is badociated with health in general or various diseases.
The OSU research conducted by Ph.D. student Courtney Armor goes further by examining not only the organisms present in the microbiome, but also their functions. The results were published in mSystèmes.
Armor, collaborating with Thomas Sharpton, a researcher in statistics and microbiology at the OSU College of Science, badyzed data and results from eight different studies covering seven different diseases in a metagenomic meta-badysis.
Metagenomics refers to the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental samples – in this case, human stool samples – as opposed to organisms grown in the laboratory. A meta-badysis is a statistical technique that combines data from multiple studies.
The meta-badysis conducted by Armor, Sharpton, and their collaborators included metagenomic data from nearly 2,000 stool specimens collected in colorectal cancer, Crohn's disease, liver cirrhosis, and colorectal cancer studies. Obesity, rheumatoid arthritis, type 2 diabetes and ulcerative colitis.
The gut microbiota comprises more than 10 trillion microbial cells from about 1,000 different bacterial species. The microbial ecosystem remains in equilibrium thanks to cell-to-cell signaling and the release of antimicrobial peptides that control certain bacterial clades.
Intestinal microbes also interact with their human host, sometimes to promote health, sometimes to contribute to the development of the disease. Dysbiosis, or imbalance, in the microbiome is usually badociated with adverse effects on the health of the host.
"In our study, we examined the relationship between the richness, composition and dispersal of the family of intestinal microbiome proteins and disease," Sharpton said.
Proteins are large, complex molecules that make the bulk of the work in cells and are necessary for the structure, functioning, and regulation of tissues and organs.
"Our badysis of the richness of protein families showed that patients with Crohn's disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, or ulcerative colitis had fewer families of protein than their families. respective control, "said Sharpton. "On the other hand, people with colorectal cancer had a greater number of families of microbiome proteins than their controls."
The researchers also studied "beta dispersion", which measures the variation in microbiome composition among a group of individuals.
"Previous work has linked the disease to an increase in taxonomic beta-dispersion," Sharpton said. "We investigated whether functional beta-dispersion of the gut microbiome was different between healthy populations and those with a disease and we found an increase in functional beta-dispersion in patients with 39, colorectal cancer, Crohn's disease and cirrhosis of the liver, obese subjects presented controls. "
The amount of overlap – functions badociated with multiple diseases – was striking, said Armor, who added that there was much more to learn.
"We really need more data," she said. "And we need more information on the topics discussed in the studies, on other factors likely to affect the microbiome, such as food and geography. more data from different locations and populations to account for sources of variation. "
According to Sharpton, the long-term goal is to allow physicians to use information derived from metagenomics to diagnose diseases "more specifically, more quickly and in a less invasive way."
"Our work points to information encoded in the metagenome that could be used for this purpose, but it requires more data to make these diagnoses more robust," he said. "We are trying to unravel the causes and effects, solve these needles in haystacks and find the links between the microbiome and health, and future research can use this new knowledge to test the functions of the microbiome against the presence and the severity of various diseases. "
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The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation supported this research, which included scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California at San Francisco, and Gladstone Institutes.
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