Our experimental approaches will integrate several models to investigate dietary bioactives mitigating chronic diseases. This includes a concocted microbial community of 10-12 gut microbes that are representative of major populations typical of the healthy adult colon. Briefly, bacterial community shifts in response to pulsing various dietary substrates such as oligosaccharides over long fermentative cycles will be characterized with high-throughput amplicon sequencing of phylogenetic markers. Other substrates of interest, but not limited to, include material in various waste streams of preexisting food systems in Massachusetts and elsewhere (e.g. cranberry, apple, hemp, etc.). Moreover, key metabolites such as short chain fatty acids will be quantified from inter-community interactions while metabolizing exogenous dietary fiber. This will provide important details regarding food influences on the structure of the microbial community prompting functional outcomes. As a result, we anticipate generating a comprehensive catalog of diet-microbial function relationships.
David
Sela
