Personalizing Food to the Gut Microbiome

Dietary polysaccharides from plants nourish human gut bacterial communities (microbiota). These carbohydrates promote the growth of resident microbes that resist pathogens, metabolize drugs, and train the immune system. Short‐chain fatty acids, which are end products of microbial polysaccharide fermentation, are also crucial metabolic precursors and energy sources for human colon cells. Yet, despite growing awareness for the importance of polysaccharides on gut bacterial growth and metabolism, optimal strategies for consuming these carbohydrates have lagged. Multiple sources of dietary carbohydrates (prebiotics) exist and each has varying effects on gut bacterial species. Moreover, gut microbial communities vary widely between people and even within individuals over time. Here, we describe our efforts to understand how prebiotic treatments should account for inter‐individual differences in gut microbiota composition. These efforts rely on experimental tools including high‐throughput bacterial culture assays and artificial gut systems. Using these systems, we find evidence for prebiotic‐ and individual‐specific components of gut microbiota responses to prebiotic therapy. We also observe changing prebiotic responses within individual gut microbiota over time. Lastly, our experiments suggest the potential for developing diagnostics to predict individual prebiotic response. Support or Funding Information LAD acknowledges support from the Global Probiotics Council, a Searle Scholars Award, the Hartwell Foundation, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Translational Research Institute through Cooperative Agreement NNX16AO69A, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, the Hartwell Foundation, and the NIH (1R01DK116187‐01, P30 DK034987). This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .