Abstract
The human colonic microbiota plays an important role in the food digestion process and has a key role in maintaining health status. This community of microbes is inter-individually different due to several factors that modulate its composition. Among them, diet is one of the most relevant, which, in turn, is affected by environmental, economic, and cultural considerations. These pieces of evidence have promoted the study of the influence of diet on gut microbiota and the development of in vitro models that simulate the colonic digestion of foods. This narrative review aims to present a technical approach of the in vitro gut models available to evaluate the impact of diet on human colonic microbiota. A description and comments on the main characteristics, parameters, applicability, faecal inoculum preparation, and analytical tools are made. Despite the progress of in vitro colonic digestion models and metaomic applicability in this research field, there are still some challenges to face due to the lack of a consensus on the methodologies to conduct in vitro colonic digestions and the need to integrate the metaomic data to fully understand the influence of food in human colonic microbiota.
Highlights
A Practical Approach towards Models’ Design and Analytical ToolsElena Veintimilla-Gozalbo 1 , Andrea Asensio-Grau 1, *, Joaquim Calvo-Lerma 1,2 , Ana Heredia 1 and Ana Andrés 1
The role of diet in human health has been repeatedly addressed and confirmed.elucidating the relationship between nutrition and health requires an accurate understanding of the digestion process through which foods are transformed and interact with the organism to exert their eventual biological function [1].Along digestion, chemical and enzymatic reactions, along with mechanical forces, transform food matrices and their main macronutrients into their conforming constituents, which are absorbed by the enterocytes in the small intestine [1]
Despite of the fact that static models are useful tools to study gut microbiota-food interactions, they have limitations when it comes to mimicking gut fermentation as a dynamic process [7,11]; for that reason, great effort has been made to develop dynamic colonic methods
Summary
Elena Veintimilla-Gozalbo 1 , Andrea Asensio-Grau 1, *, Joaquim Calvo-Lerma 1,2 , Ana Heredia 1 and Ana Andrés 1.
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