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Designer fibre meals sway human gut microbes

Understanding how diet affects gut microbes and thereby influences human health might lead to targeted dietary strategies. A clinical trial now provides some steps on the path towards this goal.
  1. Avner Leshem

    1. Avner Leshem is in the Department of Immunology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 7610001, Israel, and in the Department of Surgery, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel.

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  2. Eran Elinav

    1. Eran Elinav is in the Department of Immunology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 7610001, Israel, and in the Division of Microbiome and Cancer, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.

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There is growing evidence that our normal resident gut microorganisms, termed commensal microbes, can affect human health. Promoting beneficial commensal microbes through a type of nutritional supplement called a prebiotic is an area of intensive scientific and medical research. However, trying to harness a diet with the desired effect is challenging because the gut microbial community (also known as the microbiome) is highly complex, and because dietary responses are modulated by multiple hereditary and non-hereditary factors. Writing in Nature, Delannoy-Bruno et al.1 fill an essential gap in our mechanistic understanding of diet–microbiome interactions by focusing on dietary fibre, a family of substances of pronounced physiological virtues that are predominantly metabolized by commensal microbes. This provides a sequel to the team’s previous work on the development of microbiome-targeting foods2–6.

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Nature 595, 32-34 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01601-y

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Competing Interests

E.E. is the is the scientific founder of DayTwo and BiomX.

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