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Researchers at the Oregon State University have made an important advance in understanding the roles that gut bacteria play in human health.
Learning the mechanisms by which the microbes affect the health of their hosts opens the door to the development of better, more personalized diagnostic methods and therapies.
Most studies in the field of microbiome – i.e., which are present, and in which amounts – associates with health in general or various diseases.
The OSU research led by Ph.D. student Courtney Armor goes a step further in the microbiome, but also what functions they might be performing. Findings were published in mSystems.
Armor, working under microbiology and statistics researcher Thomas Sharpton in OSU 's College of Science, analyzed data and findings from eight different studies of seven different diseases in metagenomic meta – analysis.
Metagenomics refers to the study of genetic material from environmental samples – in this case, human fecal samples – as opposed to cultured in a lab. A meta-analysis is a statistical technique for combining data from multiple studies.
The meta-analysis performed by Armor, Sharpton and their collaborators involved metagenomic data from nearly 2,000 stool samples collected for studies involving colorectal cancer, Crohn's disease, liver cirrhosis, obesity, rheumatoid arthritis, type 2 diabetes and ulcerative colitis.
The gut microbiota features more than 10 microbial trillion cells from about 1,000 different bacterial species. The microbial ecosystem stays in balance via cell-to-cell signaling and the release of antimicrobial peptides that keep in check certain bacterial clades.
Gut microbes interact with their human host, in which they contribute to disease development. Dysbiosis, or imbalance, in the microbiome is commonly associated with detrimental effects to the host's health.
"In our study, we looked at how gut microbiome protein family richness, composition and dispersion relates to disease," Sharpton said.
Proteins are broad, complex molecules that are required for structure, function and regulation of tissues and organs.
"Our analysis of protein has been shown to be in patients with Crohn's disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes or ulcerative colitis. "On the other hand, people with colorectal cancer had a greater number of microbiome protein families than their controls."
The researchers also looked at "beta-dispersion," which measures the compositional variation of the microbiome among a group of individuals.
"Prior work linked to an increase in taxonomic beta-dispersion," Sharpton said. "We looked at whether gut microbiome functional beta-dispersion is different between healthy and diseased populations and increases in functional beta-dispersion in patients with colorectal cancer, Crohn's disease and liver cirrhosis. controls. "
The amount of overlap – functions associating with multiple diseases – was striking, said Armor, who added there is much more to learn.
"We really need more data," she said. "And we need more information about the subjects in the studies, about other things that may be affecting the microbiome, things like diet and geography.
The long-term goal, Sharon said, is for doctors to be able to use information derived from metagenomics to diagnose diseases "more specifically, more quickly and less invasively."
"Our work points to information coding in metagenome that could be used for that, but that requires more robust diagnoses," he said. "We're trying to say" cause and effect, to resolve these microbiome and health problems ".
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, San Francisco, and Gladstone Institutes.
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