title: Modeling-Enabled Systems Nutritional Immunology.
abstract: This review highlights the fundamental role of nutrition in the maintenance of health, the immune response, and disease prevention. Emerging global mechanistic insights in the field of nutritional immunology cannot be gained through reductionist methods alone or by analyzing a single nutrient at a time. We propose to investigate nutritional immunology as a massively interacting system of interconnected multistage and multiscale networks that encompass hidden mechanisms by which nutrition, microbiome, metabolism, genetic predisposition, and the immune system interact to delineate health and disease. The review sets an unconventional path to apply complex science methodologies to nutritional immunology research, discovery, and development through "use cases" centered around the impact of nutrition on the gut microbiome and immune responses. Our systems nutritional immunology analyses, which include modeling and informatics methodologies in combination with pre-clinical and clinical studies, have the potential to discover emerging systems-wide properties at the interface of the immune system, nutrition, microbiome, and metabolism.
authors.affiliation: Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (www.nimml.org), Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; The Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens, Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Meghna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Verma
authors.affiliation: Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (www.nimml.org), Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; The Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens, Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Raquel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hontecillas
authors.affiliation: Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (www.nimml.org), Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; The Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens, Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Vida
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Abedi
authors.affiliation: Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (www.nimml.org), Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; The Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens, Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Leber
authors.affiliation: Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (www.nimml.org), Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; The Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens, Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Nuria
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Tubau-Juni
authors.affiliation: BioTherapeutics Inc , Blacksburg, VA , USA.
authors.forename: Casandra
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Philipson
authors.affiliation: BioTherapeutics Inc , Blacksburg, VA , USA.
authors.forename: Adria
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Carbo
authors.affiliation: Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (www.nimml.org), Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; The Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens, Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Josep
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bassaganya-Riera
keywords: big data; complex systems; computational modeling; informatics; nutrition; nutritional immunology; systems biology