Integrating ‘-omics’ and natural product discovery platforms to investigate metabolic exchange in microbiomes

The microbiome is an abundance of microorganisms within a host (e.g. human microbiome). These microorganisms produce small molecules and metabolites that have been shown to affect and dictate the physiology of an individual. Functional knowledge of these molecules, often produced for communication o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current opinion in chemical biology 2011-02, Vol.15 (1), p.79-87
Main Authors: Yang, Jane Y, Karr, Jessica R, Watrous, Jeramie D, Dorrestein, Pieter C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biological Products - analysis
Biological Products - chemistry
Biological Products - metabolism
Computational Biology
Genomics - methods
Humans
Metagenome
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Summary:The microbiome is an abundance of microorganisms within a host (e.g. human microbiome). These microorganisms produce small molecules and metabolites that have been shown to affect and dictate the physiology of an individual. Functional knowledge of these molecules, often produced for communication or defense, will reveal the interplay between microbes and host in health and disease. The vast diversity in structure and function of microbiome-associated small molecules necessitate tools that will utilize multiple ‘-omics’ strategies to understand the interactions within the human microbiome. This review discusses the importance of these investigations and the integration of current ‘-omics’ technologies with tools established in natural product discovery in order to identify and characterize uncharacterized small molecules in the effort towards diagnostic modeling of the human microbiome.
ISSN:1367-5931
1879-0402
DOI:10.1016/j.cbpa.2010.10.025