Nutrition & Microbiome
The things we eat have a fundamental impact on our health and risk of disease. Gut microbiota play a major role in processing of food.
The microbial-mammalian axis of metabolism is intimately connected with – and modified by - nutritional status and can introduce context-dependent variation in human response to dietary factors.
The interactions of nutrition and gut microbiota are highly complex. Not only are there many factors that modulate these interactions but the complement of gut microflora in an individual is comprised of a variable and plastic population that is itself modulated by nutrition.
We are currently investigating a wide range of research topics related to nutrition and microbiome interactions using top-down systems biology approaches, These include: caloric restriction, nutritional supplements, dietary deficiency, gut microbial modulation of nutritional demand, and the toxicological consequences related to agents found in food.
Nutritional research in Biomolecular Medicine benefits from integration of non-human models with molecular epidemiological profiling in large human populations, such as INTERMAP, where the impact of nutritional differences in large populations is being assessed.
Contact: Dr. Marc E. Dumas: m.dumas@imperial.ac.uk
Key Projects
- BAIR (Wellcome Trust, 2002 - 2007)
- FGENTCARD (EC-FP6, 2007 - 2010)
- FLORINASH (EC-FP7, 2010 - 2013)
- Nestle-Imperial College Research Alliance (Nestle, 2009 - )
Key Recent Publications
Mestdagh R, Dumas ME, Rezzi S, Kochhar S, Holmes E, Claus SP, Nicholson JK. Gut microbiota modulate the metabolism of Brown Adipose Tissue. J Proteome Res 2011 Nov 4. [Epub ahead of print].
Merrifield CA, Lewis M, Claus SP, Beckonert OP, Dumas ME, Duncker S, Kochhar S, Rezzi S, Lindon JC, Bailey M, Holmes E, Nicholson JK. A metabolic system-wide characterisation of the pig: a model for human physiology. Mol Biosyst. 2011;7(9):2577-2588.
Dumas ME. Th e microbial-mammalian metabolic axis: beyond simple metabolism. Cell Metabolism 2011;13(5):489-90.
Claus SP, Ellero S, Berger B, Krause L, Bruttin A , Molina A, Paris A, Want E, De Waziers I, Cloarec O, Richards S, Wang Y, Dumas ME, Ross A, Rezzi S, Kochhar S Van Bladeren P, Lindon J, Holmes E, Nicholson JK. 2011. Colonization-induced host-gut microbial metabolic interaction. MBio2011; 2(2):e00271-10.
Heinzmann SS, Brown IJ, Chan Q, Bictash M, Dumas ME, Kochhar S, Stamler J, Holmes E, Elliott P, Nicholson JK. Metabolic profiling strategy for discovery of nutritional biomarkers: proline betaine as a marker of citrus consumption. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010; 92:436-443.
Fearnside JF, Dumas ME, Rothwell AR, Wilder SP, Cloarec O, Toye A, Blancher C, Holmes E, Tatoud R, Barton RH and others. Phylometabonomic patterns of adaptation to high fat diet feeding in inbred mice. PLoS ONE 2008; 3(2):e1668.
Faber JH, Malmodin D, Toft H, Maher AD, Crockford D, Holmes E, Nicholson JK, Dumas ME, Baunsgaard D. Metabonomics in diabetes research. J Diabetes Sci Technol 2007; 1(4):549-57.
Toye AA, Dumas ME, Blancher C, Rothwell AR, Fearnside JF, Wilder SP, Bihoreau MT, Cloarec O, Azzouzi I, Young S and others. Subtle metabolic and liver gene transcriptional changes underlie diet-induced fatty liver susceptibility in insulin-resistant mice. Diabetologia 2007; 50(9):1867-79.
Martin FP, Dumas ME, Wang Y, Legido-Quigley C, Yap IK, Tang H, Zirah S, Murphy GM, Cloarec O, Lindon JC and others. A top-down systems biology view of microbiome-mammalian metabolic interactions in a mouse model. Mol Syst Biol 2007; 3:112.
Dumas ME, Wilder SP, Bihoreau MT, Barton RH, Fearnside JF, Argoud K, D'Amato L, Wallis RH, Blancher C, Keun HC and others. Direct quantitative trait locus mapping of mammalian metabolic phenotypes in diabetic and normoglycemic rat models. Nat Genet 2007; 39(5):666-72.
Dumas ME; Barton RH; Toye A; Cloarec O; Blancher C; Rothwell A; Fearnside J; Tatoud R; et al. Metabolic profiling reveals a contribution of gut microbiota to fatty liver phenotype in insulin-resistant mice. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006; 103:12511-12516.
