Gut Microbiota Modulation of Host Physiology: The Search for Mechanism (C1)

The gut microbiome has been identified as an important environmental factor that affects many physiologic processes such as cell proliferation and differentiation, immune function as well as metabolism and may as such contribute to a wide variety of diseases including cancer, inflammatory, metabolic diseases and responses to pathogens. Most studies associating microbiota with particular diseases have been cross sectional in design, and in many disease contexts the microbe-host interactions and feedbacks between host health and microbiome activity underlying disease remain to be elucidated. The integration of large-omics datasets that are the first step in the characterization of microbiome-disease interactions are particularly challenging to integrate with detailed mechanistic studies of simplified laboratory models conducted in multiple host species. The goal of this Keystone Symposia meeting on Gut Microbiota Modulation of Host Physiology: The Search for Mechanism is to facilitate the understanding by which mechanisms the microbiota modulates host physiologic processes and increase our understanding on how an altered microbiota contributes to health and disease in humans.