Dietary Regulation Of Host Physiology Via The Gut Microbiota

Diet shapes both the composition and activity of the gut microbiota, resulting in diet-microbe-host interactions that modulate host physiology. I will present two projects depicting the effects of a dietary component (sulfur amino acids (Saa)) in modulating disease in mouse models of colorectal cancer and chronic kidney disease. We found that high Saa diet results in an expansion of a specific bacterial species, correlated with activation of a dendritic cell-T-cell axis crucial for anti-tumor immune response. In a second disease model of chronic kidney disease, we found that the interaction between the microbiota and dietary Saa affect the severity of renal injury through induction of a posttranslational modification on the bacterial enzyme tryptophanase, resulting in reduced uremic toxin production. Overall, my overarching interest is to uncover characterize, and engineer novel diet-microbe-host interactions at the molecular level, with the hope of translating my research to human therapies.