MICOM: Metagenome-Scale Modeling To Infer Metabolic Interactions in the Gut Microbiota

Abstract

The bacterial communities that live within the human gut have been linked to health and disease. However, we are still just beginning to understand how those bacteria interact and what potential interventions to our gut microbiome can make us healthier. Here, we present a mathematical modeling framework (named MICOM) that can recapitulate the growth rates of diverse bacterial species in the gut and can simulate metabolic interactions within microbial communities. We show that MICOM can unravel the ecological rules that shape the microbial landscape in our gut and that a given dietary or probiotic intervention can have widely different effects in different people.

Topics & Concepts