Gut–Brain Axis and Neurodegeneration: State-of-the-Art of Meta-Omics Sciences for Microbiota Characterization
Open Access
- 4 June 2020
- journal article
- review article
- Published by MDPI AG in International Journal of Molecular Sciences
- Vol. 21 (11), 4045
- https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21114045
Abstract
Recent advances in the field of meta-omics sciences and related bioinformatics tools have allowed a comprehensive investigation of human-associated microbiota and its contribution to achieving and maintaining the homeostatic balance. Bioactive compounds from the microbial community harboring the human gut are involved in a finely tuned network of interconnections with the host, orchestrating a wide variety of physiological processes. These includes the bi-directional crosstalk between the central nervous system, the enteric nervous system, and the gastrointestinal tract (i.e., gut–brain axis). The increasing accumulation of evidence suggest a pivotal role of the composition and activity of the gut microbiota in neurodegeneration. In the present review we aim to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art of meta-omics sciences including metagenomics for the study of microbial genomes and taxa strains, metatranscriptomics for gene expression, metaproteomics and metabolomics to identify and/or quantify microbial proteins and metabolites, respectively. The potential and limitations of each discipline were highlighted, as well as the advantages of an integrated approach (multi-omics) to predict microbial functions and molecular mechanisms related to human diseases. Particular emphasis is given to the latest results obtained with these approaches in an attempt to elucidate the link between the gut microbiota and the most common neurodegenerative diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).This publication has 137 references indexed in Scilit:
- Liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry characterization of metabolites guided by the METLIN databaseNature Protocols, 2013
- Computational meta'omics for microbial community studiesMolecular Systems Biology, 2013
- Functional assignment of metagenomic data: challenges and applicationsBriefings in Bioinformatics, 2012
- Genomic approaches to studying the human microbiotaNature, 2012
- Andromeda: A Peptide Search Engine Integrated into the MaxQuant EnvironmentJournal of Proteome Research, 2011
- Gut Microbiota in Health and DiseasePhysiological Reviews, 2010
- Composition, variability, and temporal stability of the intestinal microbiota of the elderlyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010
- Metabolomic Characterization of Human Rectal Adenocarcinoma with Intact Tissue Magnetic Resonance SpectroscopyDiseases of the Colon & Rectum, 2009
- KEGG: Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and GenomesNucleic Acids Research, 2000
- An approach to correlate tandem mass spectral data of peptides with amino acid sequences in a protein databaseJournal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, 1994