Invited Talk: Metabolomics Detects Functions of Gut Microbes-Functional Microbiomes

In recent years, the gut microbiota has gained increasing attention not only due to its impact on host physiology and immune system development, but also because perturbation of the microbiota may result in a number of diseases, such as diabetes, infectious disease, cardiovascular disease as well as cancer. Thus, understanding the impact that the microbiota plays in various diseases and the way microbes can be modified are fundamental for the development of novel therapeutic strategies for disease treatment and disease prevention. One way of investigating the changes gut microbes is to measure then using metagenomics tools. However, many of genes in microbes world have not been annotated and their functions are unknown. Metabolomics provides alternative way to detect functions of perturbed microbiome communities-functional microbiomes. In the current presentation, examples of metabonomics investigation on how dietary shapes gut microbes and how the changes are reflected in changes of metabolomes of host will be given.