General aim
To develop and validate in vitro models for Host-Microbiome Interactions (HMI) that can be used to predict the impact of interventions on the physiological balance between the host and its microbes in the oral cavity and in the gut as the key arena’s for the interplay between the host, its microbiome and diet.
Objectives
Active period
Year 3-8
ACTA, AUMC/Tytgat, WUR, UvA-SILS.
NIBI, Bètapartners, BaseClear.
Update: March 2025
WP4 has successfully hired 3 PhD students that all started their projects on January 1st 2025. The first concrete plans are made to commence with the practical work. The first experiments will focus on generating experimental data for a set of microbes to allow Genome Scale Metabolic Modelling. In addition, a joint review paper is being drafted as introduction to the subject.
The human gut harbors native microbial communities, forming a highly complex ecosystem. Synthetic microbial communities (SynComs) of the human gut are an assembly of microorganisms isolated from human mucosa or fecal samples. In recent decades, the ever-expanding culturing capacity and affordable sequencing, together with advanced computational modeling, started a ‘‘golden age’’ for harnessing the beneficial potential of SynComs to fight gastrointestinal disorders, such as infections and chronic inflammatory bowel diseases.
As simplified and completely defined microbiota, SynComs offer a promising reductionist approach to understanding the multispecies and multikingdom interactions in the microbe–host-immune axis. However, there are still many challenges to overcome before we can precisely construct SynComs of designed function and efficacy that allow the translation of scientific findings to patients’ treatments. Here, we discussed the strategies used to design, assemble, and test a SynCom, and address the significant challenges, which are of microbiological, engineering, and translational nature, that stand in the way of using SynComs as live bacterial therapeutics.
