Moving beyond microbiome-wide associations to causal microbe identification.

ABSTRACT: Microbiome-wide association studies have established that numerous diseases are associated with changes in the microbiota. These studies typically generate a long list of commensals implicated as biomarkers of disease, with no clear relevance to disease pathogenesis. If the field is to move beyond correlations and begin to address causation, an effective system is needed for refining this catalogue of differentially abundant microbes and to allow subsequent mechanistic studies. Here we demonstrate that triangulation of microbe-phenotype relationships is an effective method for reducing the noise inherent in microbiota studies and enabling identification of causal microbes. We found that gnotobiotic mice harbouring different microbial communities exhibited differential survival in a colitis

SUBMITTER: Surana NK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5730484 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature