Gut Microbiota and Metagenomic Advancement in Digestive Disease
1Washington University, Saint Louis, USA
2University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
3Huazhong Science and Technology University, Wuhan, China
4University of Louisville, Louisville, USA
5Texas A&M University, Houston, USA
Gut Microbiota and Metagenomic Advancement in Digestive Disease
Description
The human gut is home to complex and diverse communities of microbiota that contribute to the overall homeostasis of the host. Increasingly, the intestinal microbiota is recognized as an important player in human illness, particularly in many digestive diseases with mystic etiologies, such as malnutrition (both under and over), nonalcohol fatty liver disease (NAFLD), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and colorectal cancer (CRC). Until recently, much of our understanding of the complexity and diversity of the microorganisms in the gastrointestinal tract relied on observations from microbiological culture. However, unwinding of metagenomics utilizing culture-independent molecular methods based on the highly conserved bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA gene and advances in parallel large-scale deep sequencing technology have allowed more in-depth studies on the gut microbiota in the digestive diseases.
By utilizing high-throughput sequencing technologies, recent studies have explored compositional changes in the gut microbiota and identified potential pathogenic components from candidate bacterial species in certain digestive diseases, especially in IBD and NAFLD. Studies also have been attempted to clarify the utility of fecal microbiota transplantation and modulation for treatment of gastrointestinal and other organ system diseases. In the perspective of metagenomics in the gut microbiota, future studies have been expected to advance our understanding in etiology and pathogenesis and to develop new therapeutic strategies for a wide spectrum of human illness, including certain refractory digestive diseases.
In this special issue of this journal, we would like to present recent advances in research of the gut microbiota in gastrointestinal and liver diseases. Studies with metagenomics and functional analysis of gut microbiota to elucidate epidemiology, genetics, genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics would feature this special issue very well.
We invite investigators to contribute original research articles and review articles focused on gut microbiota and digestive diseases in patients and animal models.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Epidemiology in a variety of global populations
- Metagenomics analysis of gut microbiota
- Functional analysis of potential causal bacterial species
- Epigenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics profiling
- New therapeutic strategies attempting to modulate gut microbiota
- Method development for metagenomics and functional analysis