Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2017 Mar 7;25(3):522-534.
doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2017.02.001.

Integrative Physiology: At the Crossroads of Nutrition, Microbiota, Animal Physiology, and Human Health

François Leulier  1 , Lesley T MacNeil  2 , Won-Jae Lee  3 , John F Rawls  4 , Patrice D Cani  5 , Martin Schwarzer  6 , Liping Zhao  7 , Stephen J Simpson  8
Affiliations
Review

Integrative Physiology: At the Crossroads of Nutrition, Microbiota, Animal Physiology, and Human Health

François Leulier et al. Cell Metab. .

Abstract

Nutrition is paramount in shaping all aspects of animal biology. In addition, the influence of the intestinal microbiota on physiology is now widely recognized. Given that diet also shapes the intestinal microbiota, this raises the question of how the nutritional environment and microbial assemblages together influence animal physiology. This research field constitutes a new frontier in the field of organismal biology that needs to be addressed. Here we review recent studies using animal models and humans and propose an integrative framework within which to define the study of the diet-physiology-microbiota systems and ultimately link it to human health. Nutritional Geometry sits centrally in the proposed framework and offers means to define diet compositions that are optimal for individuals and populations.

Keywords: C. elegans; Drosophila; fish; health; human; microbiota; mouse; nutrition; physiology; piglets.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:. Integrative physiology:
From model systems to human to models. The nutritional environment and microbial assemblages together influence animal physiology.
Figure 2:
Figure 2:. “Bedside to Bench to Bedside”-
Strategy for dissecting the role of the gut microbiota in human health and disease.
Figure 3:
Figure 3:
An integrative framework linking nutritional ecology to diet-physiology- behavior-microbiota interactions and health.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Austin CP, Battey JF, Bradley A, Bucan M, Capecchi M, Collins FS, Dove WF, Duyk G, Dymecki S, Eppig JT, et al. (2004). The knockout mouse project. Nature genetics 36, 921–924. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Backhed F, Manchester JK, Semenkovich CF, and Gordon JI (2007). Mechanisms underlying the resistance to diet-induced obesity in germ-free mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, 979–984. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bae S, Mueller O, Wong S, Rawls JF, and Valvidia RH (2016). Genomic sequencing- based mutational enrichment analysis identifies motility genes in a genetically intractable gut microbe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113, 14127–14132. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baker KD, and Thummel CS (2007). Diabetic larvae and obese flies-emerging studies of metabolism in Drosophila. Cell Metab 6, 257–266. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bartholomew GA (1986). The Role of Natural-History in Contemporary Biology. Bioscience 36, 324–329.

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources