The chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, are recognized as important causes of gastrointestinal disease in children and adults. Insight into IBD is advancing rapidly owing to a plethora of investigations into intestinal inflammation in animal models, advances in the interrogation of diseases inherited as complex genetic traits, and the development o...

Holometabolous insects undergo a radical anatomical re-organisation during metamorphosis. This poses a developmental challenge: the host must replace the larval gut but at the same time retain symbiotic gut microbes and avoid infection by opportunistic pathogens. By manipulating host immunity and bacterial competitive ability, we study how the host Galleria mellonella and the symbiotic bacteriu...

Parasitic protozoan infections represent a major health burden in the developing world and contribute significantly to morbidity and mortality. These infections are often associated with considerable variability in clinical presentation. An emerging body of work suggests that the intestinal microbiota may help to explain some of these differences in disease expression. The objective of this min...

Whether we are aware or not, diverse microorganisms are living on almost all environmentally exposed surfaces on our body without eliciting harmful immune responses. In fact, recent understanding from numerous studies indicates that our health is highly dependent on the contribution of intestinal commensal bacteria. It appears through its symbiotic interaction with the host, which is the result...

Recent clinical and experimental studies indicate that multiple sclerosis develops as consequence of a failed interplay between genetic ("nature") and environmental ("nurture") factors. A large number of risk genes favour an autoimmune response against the body's own brain matter. New experimental data indicate that the actual trigger of this attack is however provided by an interaction of brai...

Human milk, which nourishes the early infants, is a source of bioactive components for the infant growth, development and commensal formulation as well. Human milk oligosaccharide is a group of complex and diverse glycans that is apparently not absorbed in human gastrointestinal tract. Although most mammalian milk contains oligosaccharides, oligosaccharides in human milk exhibit unique features...

conclusions the results showed that although the human gut microbiome plays a pivotal role in health in a normal concentration, fluctuation in their number (increase or decrease) is a possible factor in the appearance of major diseases. context the composition and function of the gut microbiota develop with their host from birth. the human microbiome, especially the gut microbiota, plays a crit...

Complex mechanisms are pulling the strings to initiate the development of inflammatory bowel disease. Current evidence indicates that an interaction of genetic susceptibilities (polymorphisms), environmental factors, and the host microbiota leads to a dysregulation of the mucosal immune system. In the past decades, the interleukin-10-deficient mouse has served as an excellent model to mirror th...

Millions of microbes are found in the human gut, and are collectively referred as the gut microbiota. Recent studies have estimated that the microbiota genome contains 100-fold more genes than the host genome. These microbiota contribute to digestion by processing energy substrates unutilized by the host, with about half of the total genome of the gut microbiota being related to central carbon ...

The intestinal microbiota and gut immune system must constantly communicate to maintain a balance between tolerance and activation: on the one hand, our immune system should protect us from pathogenic microbes and on the other hand, most of the millions of microbes in and on our body are innocuous symbionts and some can even be beneficial. Since there is such a close interaction between the imm...