Healthy Lion Award Lecture - The Industrialized Gut Microbiome: In Need of Repair

The links between our gut microbiome and our health, combined with the malleability of this community, suggest that if we learn the rules for how to manipulate our gut microbes, we will be able to treat and prevent disease. Our global analyses of diverse human populations, ranging from hunter-gatherer to industrialized, show that the gut microbiome is profoundly influenced by lifestyle. Those of us in the industrialized world are harboring a community of microbes that diverge from ancestral states. Loss of species and functions that inhabited humans over much of our evolution and replacement with new taxa may result in incompatibilities between the industrialized microbiome and human biology. Diet has emerged as one of the most powerful levers available to shape the composition and function of microbes within the gut. With a large collaborative team, we have conducted several dietary intervention trials in cohorts of US residents, which provide great insight into the diet-microbiome-host axis and fuel a pipeline of reverse translational studies. We are addressing whether diet, when combined with bacterial genetic engineering, can be used to engraft desirable microbes into the gut community. Molecular mechanisms of host-microbial interaction are pursued using an array of technologies and experimental approaches, including gnotobiotic and conventional mouse models, quantitative imaging, and a metabolomics pipeline focused on defining microbiota-dependent metabolites.

Biography:
Justin Sonnenburg, PhD, is the Alex and Susie Algard Endowed Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he studies the gut microbiota in health and disease and co-directs the Center for Human Microbiome Studies. His laboratory at Stanford develops and employs diverse technologies to understand basic principles that govern interactions within the intestinal microbiota and between the microbiota and the host. An ongoing objective of the research program is to devise and implement innovative strategies to prevent and treat disease in humans via the gut microbiota. Justin completed his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, in Ajit Varki's laboratory. His postdoctoral work was conducted at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, in the laboratory of Jeffrey Gordon. He has received an NIH Director's New Innovator Award and Pioneer Award, the AGA Research Mentor Award, and co-founded Interface Biosciences. He and his wife and collaborator, Erica, are the authors of the book The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-Term Health.