Abstract
The gut microbiota is the complex community of microorganisms that inhabit the human intestine. Gut microbes participate in many aspects of human physiology, including health and disease. Food ingredients, drugs and other environmental factors can affect the gut microbiota, with possible consequences on human health. Progress in microbiome research has significantly stimulated and expanded the interest in technologies to study the potential of different products to modulate the gastro-intestinal ecosystem. In this context we have developed a method, called the i-screen, to evaluate the effects of compounds on the human gut microbiota. The i-screen is an in vitro system that allows the anaerobic cultivation of microorganisms obtained from fecal material, and therefore representative of the highly diverse colonic microbiota. By means of specific analyses, the effects of test compounds on the gut microbiota composition and metabolic activity can be assessed. The i-screen has proven to be an effective and versatile experimental model of the gut microbiota, routinely applied to evaluate the effects of food ingredients and drugs. This system constitutes a valid contribution to product development and a starting point for a better understanding of the role of gut microbiota in host health.
Highlights
The human intestine is colonized by dense and diverse communities of microorganisms, collectively referred to as the gut microbiota
Nowadays it is accepted that the metabolism of the host and of its microbes are tightly connected: gut microbes are involved in many different aspects of human physiology, such as nutrition and immunity, and they play important roles in the maintenance of health and the development of disease [3]
Food and pharmaceutical compounds have a bidirectional interaction with the gut microbiota: metabolic and antimicrobial effects of these substances can induce specific changes in its composition and function; at the same time microbial metabolism is responsible for the transformation of pharmaceutical compounds and the breakdown of food ingredients [4]
Summary
The human intestine is colonized by dense and diverse communities of microorganisms, collectively referred to as the gut microbiota. These communities are unique for each individual, and they differ on the basis of geographic areas, age groups (e.g. babies, elderly) and health conditions (e.g. obese, IBD) [1,2]. To better understand the gut microbiota and the many ways in which it impacts our responses to food intake, pharmaceuticals, environmental toxins and other microbes, it is important to develop methods that allow the study of effects of compounds while adequately mimicking in vivo conditions. The microbiota that is incubated in the i-screen is obtained from human fecal material This is collected following a standardized protocol, handled in anaerobic conditions to ensure the survival of colonic microorganisms, and kept frozen at -80°C until use in an i-screen experiment. Clostridium difficile can be added to the microbiota to investigate the ecological effects of infection by a gastric pathogen, and to assess the impact of therapeutic interventions on the target bacteria as well as on the microbiota
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