What Can the Gut Microbiota of Animals Teach Us about the Relationship between Nutrition and Burden of Lifestyle Diseases?

Abstract

The gut microbiota performs several crucial roles in a holobiont with its host, including immune regulation, nutrient absorption, synthesis, and defense against external pathogens, significantly influencing host physiology. Disruption of the gut microbiota has been linked to various chronic conditions, including cardiovascular, kidney, liver, respiratory, and intestinal diseases. Studying how animals adapt their gut microbiota across their life course at different life stages and under the dynamics of extreme environmental conditions can provide valuable insights from the natural world into how the microbiota modulates host biology, with a view to translating these into treatments or preventative measures for human diseases. By modulating the gut microbiota, opportunities to address many complications associated with chronic diseases appear. Such a biomimetic approach holds promise for exploring new strategies in healthcare and disease management.

Keywords: biomimetics; chronic diseases; food; gut microbiota.

Figure 1

Gut microbiota and animal phenotype. $\mathrm{S}\mathrm{y}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{b}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{s}: \uparrow = \mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{e};\downarrow = \mathrm{R}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}$.