The human gastrointestinal tract hosts a diverse network of microorganisms, collectively known as the microbiota that plays an important role in health and disease, particularly by regulating immune homeostasis. The innate immune compartment, serving as the frontline between host and gut microbiota, is tightly related to the gut microorganism. Compositional changes in the microbiome have been linked to various microbes that cause disease, including bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. Still, our understanding of how gut bacteria modulate the immune system and lead to different disease states remains limited, particularly in humans where a lack of deliberate manipulations makes inference challenging.
We are just beginning to understand the effects our microbiome has on us, but it is clear that they can be profound. To realize its full potential, studies linking the microbiome to disease states need to focus on establishing causality and molecular mechanism, with an emphasis on phenotypes that are large in magnitude, easy to reproduce, and unequivocally driven by the microbiota. Still, the results from much of the microbiome literature are correlative and less impactful and, owing to this, there are many inconsistencies within the literature, casting doubt on the reliability of existing findings
More sophisticated tools to study the microbiome have been recently developed; with the advent of shotgun metagenomic sequencing and the use of analytical and mathematical methods, we are now fit to establish causal roles between the microbiome and different diseases states. This article collection focuses on the regulatory mechanisms of gut microbiota and the innate immune system, and possible implications to explain the pathophysiology of different disease states.
We welcome the submissions of Original Research, Review, Mini-review, and Perspective articles focusing, but not limited to, the following sub-topics:
• insights into the two-way relationship between the microbiota and the mucosal innate immune system
• how disruptions in the commensal flora, particularly by antibiotics, affect the expression of innate immune effector molecules by the intestinal epithelium
• the host’s ability/inability to resist colonization and infection after the manipulation of the commensal flora and/or the innate immune system.
The human gastrointestinal tract hosts a diverse network of microorganisms, collectively known as the microbiota that plays an important role in health and disease, particularly by regulating immune homeostasis. The innate immune compartment, serving as the frontline between host and gut microbiota, is tightly related to the gut microorganism. Compositional changes in the microbiome have been linked to various microbes that cause disease, including bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. Still, our understanding of how gut bacteria modulate the immune system and lead to different disease states remains limited, particularly in humans where a lack of deliberate manipulations makes inference challenging.
We are just beginning to understand the effects our microbiome has on us, but it is clear that they can be profound. To realize its full potential, studies linking the microbiome to disease states need to focus on establishing causality and molecular mechanism, with an emphasis on phenotypes that are large in magnitude, easy to reproduce, and unequivocally driven by the microbiota. Still, the results from much of the microbiome literature are correlative and less impactful and, owing to this, there are many inconsistencies within the literature, casting doubt on the reliability of existing findings
More sophisticated tools to study the microbiome have been recently developed; with the advent of shotgun metagenomic sequencing and the use of analytical and mathematical methods, we are now fit to establish causal roles between the microbiome and different diseases states. This article collection focuses on the regulatory mechanisms of gut microbiota and the innate immune system, and possible implications to explain the pathophysiology of different disease states.
We welcome the submissions of Original Research, Review, Mini-review, and Perspective articles focusing, but not limited to, the following sub-topics:
• insights into the two-way relationship between the microbiota and the mucosal innate immune system
• how disruptions in the commensal flora, particularly by antibiotics, affect the expression of innate immune effector molecules by the intestinal epithelium
• the host’s ability/inability to resist colonization and infection after the manipulation of the commensal flora and/or the innate immune system.
