Shifting from a gene-centric to metabolite-centric strategy to determine the core gut microbiome.
A key challenge in the area of determining how the microbiome communicates with the host's karyome is deciding which microbial functions should be studied. Ideally we would wish to look at functions which are not only important to the microbial host, but which also play roles in host physiology. Selecting the key microbial functions is essential to developing robust strategies to either promote or demote them, with the aim to enhancing host health. This commentary argues that the bottom-up approach is not providing the necessary gene-set from which we can start to develop a robust core microbiome and in fact we should adopt a top-down strategy in order to indentify the functions that are important and need further study.
School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF10 3AX, UK. marchesijr@cardiff.ac.uk
Julian R
JR
Marchesi
D041981:Gastrointestinal Tract / Q000382:microbiology*; D006801:Humans; D055432:Metabolomics / Q000379:methods*; D054892:Metagenome / Q000502:physiology*; D056186:Metagenomics / Q000379:methods*; D059013:Microbial Consortia / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / Q000032:analysis
D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S