Gut Microbes and Host Physiology: What Happens When You Host Billions of Guests?

The gut microbiota has recently emerged as an important, and previously unappreciated, player in host physiology (1). In particular, the gut microbiota contributes to a variety of physiological and pathophysiological processes in the host including immune disorders (2–4), atherosclerosis (5), irritable bowel syndrome (6, 7), blood pressure regulation (8), and chronic kidney disease (9, 10). Bacteria residing in the human gut are an important component of human physiology: the total wet weight of gut microbes in the human has been estimated to be 175 g–1.5 kg (11, 12), and the cells of the microbiota outnumber human cells by 10:1 (1). These bacteria interact with the immune system of the host (13), and secrete a variety of metabolites, which enter host circulation and can affect a variety of physiological parameters (8, 14), reviewed in Ref. (15). In fact, metabolites produced by the gut microbiota have been found to play key roles in renal disease (16), blood pressure regulation (8), and immune disorders (2–4). Therefore, just as we consider the genetic background of an animal or an individual to be an important contributing factor to their physiology, so too must we consider the genetic background of the microbiota associated with that animal. Gut microbiota vary greatly amongst laboratory animals, and these differences result in notable differences in experimental results. Mice of the same strain from different vendors have different microbiota profiles (17), and similarly, the same mice housed at different institutions have different microbiota profiles (18, 19). Conversely, inoculating two different inbred mouse strains with the same gut bacteria leads to differences in host gene expression between the two mouse strains (20). Clearly, there is a complex interplay between the genetics of the microbiota and that of the host organism, which has only recently begun to be appreciated.