Gut microbiota as important modulator of metabolism in health and disease

Abstract

The human gastrointestinal tract colonizes a large number of microbial microflora, forms a host-microbiota co-metabolism structure with the host to participate in various metabolic processes in the human body, and plays a major role in the host immune response. In addition, the dysbiosis of intestinal microbial homeostasis is closely related to many diseases. Thus, an in-depth understanding of the relationship between them is of importance for disease pathogenesis, prevention and treatment. The combined use of metagenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics techniques for the analysis of gut microbiota can reveal the relationship between microbiota and the host in many ways, which has become a hot topic of analysis in recent years. This review describes the mechanism of co-metabolites in host health, including short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) and bile acid metabolism. The metabolic role of gut microbiota in obesity, liver diseases, gastrointestinal diseases and other diseases is also summarized, and the research methods for multi-omics combined application on gut microbiota are summarized. According to the studies of the interaction mechanism between gut microbiota and the host, we have a better understanding of the use of intestinal microflora in the treatment of related diseases. It is hoped that the gut microbiota can be utilized to maintain human health, providing a reference for future research.