Using metabolomics to analyse the role of gut microbiota in nutrition and disease

Abstract

This chapter describes the importance of gut microbiota in regulating human health and disease with metagenomics and metabolomics. It first describes the gut microbiota and the relationships between changes of gut microbiota and disease using the metabolomics and metagenomics approach. It then reviews the metabolomics approach for the measurement of the kinetics or flux of metabolic pathways involving gut microbiota-host co-metabolism and how they respond to different environmental stimuli and nutritional intervention. The chapter also summarises the advantages of the combined use of metagenomics and metabolomics in linking metabolite profiles to microbial compositions in nutritional research and prospected a personalised healthcare medicine/nutrition strategy through obtaining individual "metabotypes" characterised by substantial inter-individual differences in gut microbiota composition and adopting dietary and therapeutic intervention by modulating the multilevel host-microbe interactions.