Diet-mediated metaorganismal relay biotransformation: health effects and pathways

Abstract

In recent years, the concept of metaorganism expands our insight into how diet-microbe-host interactions contribute to human health and diseases. We realized that many biological metabolic processes in the host can be summarized into metaorganismal relay pathways, in which metabolites such as trimethylamine-N‑oxide, short-chain fatty acids and bile acids act as double-edged swords (beneficial or harmful effects) in the initiation and progression of diseases. Pleiotropic effects of metabolites are derived from several influencing factors including dose level, targeted organ of effect, action duration and species of these metabolites. Based on the pleiotropic effects of metabolites, personalized therapeutic approaches including microecological agents, enzymatic regulators and changes in dietary habits to govern related metabolite production may provide a new insight in promoting human health. In this review, we summarize our current knowledge of metaorganismal relay pathways and elaborate on the pleiotropic effects of metabolites in these pathways, with special emphasis on related therapeutic nutritional interventions.

Keywords:

• Diet-microbe-host interactions
• gut microbiota
• metaorganismal relay biotransformation
• pleiotropic effects of metabolites

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC1601704), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (1522044, 31671909, 31772034, 81870544, and 81870594), the Program of the Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Food Manufacturing Equipment & Technology (FMZ201904), the National First-Class Discipline Program of Food Science and Technology (JUFSTR20180205); the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20181132); the Scientific Research Project of Health Commision of Wuxi (ZZ003); and the Wuxi Scientific and Technological Development Project (N20192024 and N20191001).