Studying the Human Gut Microbiota in the Trans-Omics Era - Focus on Metagenomics and Metabonomics

The human gut microbiota comprises a diverse microbial consortium closely co-evolved with the human genome and diet. The importance of the gut microbiota in regulating human health and disease has however been largely overlooked due to the inaccessibility of the intestinal habitat, the complexity of the gut microbiota itself and the fact that many of its members resist cultivation and are in fact new to science. However, with the emergence of 16S rRNA molecular tools and "post-genomics" high resolution technologies for examining microorganisms as they occur in nature without the need for prior laboratory culture, this limited view of the gut microbiota is rapidly changing. This review will discuss the application of molecular microbiological tools to study the human gut microbiota in a culture independent manner. Genomics or metagenomics approaches have a tremendous capability to generate compositional data and to measure the metabolic potential encoded by the combined genomes of the gut microbiota. Another post-genomics approach, metabonomics, has the capacity to measure the metabolic kinetic or flux of metabolites through an ecosystem at a particular point in time or over a time course. Metabonomics thus derives data on the function of the gut microbiota in situ and how it responds to different environmental stimuli e. g. substrates like prebiotics, antibiotics and other drugs and in response to disease. Recently these two culture independent, high resolution approaches have been combined into a single "transgenomic" approach which allows correlation of changes in metabolite profiles within human biofluids with microbiota compositional metagenomic data. Such approaches are providing novel insight into the composition, function and evolution of our gut microbiota.

Studying the Human Gut Microbiota in the Trans-Omics Era - Focus on Metagenomics and Metabonomics

The human gut microbiota comprises a diverse microbial consortium closely co-evolved with the human genome and diet. The importance of the gut microbiota in regulating human health and disease has however been largely overlooked due to the inaccessibility of the intestinal habitat, the complexity of the gut microbiota itself and the fact that many of its members resist cultivation and are in fact new to science. However, with the emergence of 16S rRNA molecular tools and "post-genomics" high resolution technologies for examining microorganisms as they occur in nature without the need for prior laboratory culture, this limited view of the gut microbiota is rapidly changing. This review will discuss the application of molecular microbiological tools to study the human gut microbiota in a culture independent manner. Genomics or metagenomics approaches have a tremendous capability to generate compositional data and to measure the metabolic potential encoded by the combined genomes of the gut microbiota. Another post-genomics approach, metabonomics, has the capacity to measure the metabolic kinetic or flux of metabolites through an ecosystem at a particular point in time or over a time course. Metabonomics thus derives data on the function of the gut microbiota in situ and how it responds to different environmental stimuli e.g. substrates like prebiotics, antibiotics and other drugs and in response to disease. Recently these two culture independent, high resolution approaches have been combined into a single "transgenomic" approach which allows correlation of changes in metabolite profiles within human biofluids with microbiota compositional metagenomic data. Such approaches are providing novel insight into the composition, function and evolution of our gut microbiota.

Analytical and compositional aspects of isoflavones in food and their biological effects

This paper provides an overview of analytical techniques used to determine isoflavones (IFs) in foods and biological fluids with main emphasis on sample preparation methods. Factors influencing the content of IFs in food including processing and natural variability are summarized and an insight into IF databases is given. Comparisons of dietary intake of IFs in Asian and Western populations, in special subgroups like vegetarians, vegans, and infants are made and our knowledge on their absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion by the human body is presented. The influences of the gut microflora, age, gender, background diet, food matrix, and the chemical nature of the IFs on the metabolism of IFs are described. Potential mechanisms by which IFs may exert their actions are reviewed, and genetic polymorphism as determinants of biological response to soy IFs is discussed. The effects of IFs on a range of health outcomes including atherosclerosis, breast, intestinal, and prostate cancers, menopausal symptoms, bone health, and cognition are reviewed on the basis of the available in vitro, in vivo animal and human data.

Compositional technique for synthesising multi-phase regular arrays

We describe a high-level design method to synthesize multi-phase regular arrays. The method is based on deriving component designs using classical regular (or systolic) array synthesis techniques and composing these separately evolved component design into a unified global design. Similarity transformations ar e applied to component designs in the composition stage in order to align data ow between the phases of the computations. Three transformations are considered: rotation, re ection and translation. The technique is aimed at the design of hardware components for high-throughput embedded systems applications and we demonstrate this by deriving a multi-phase regular array for the 2-D DCT algorithm which is widely used in many vide ocommunications applications.

Compositional control of the electrical transport properties in the new series of thiospinels Ga1-xGexV4S8-delta (0 <=x<=1)

A new series of non-stoichiometric sulfides Ga1−xGexV4S8−δ (0≤x≤1; δ≤0.23) has been synthesized at high temperatures by heating stoichiometric mixtures of the elements in sealed quartz tubes. The samples have been characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, SQUID magnetometry and electrical transport-property measurements. Structural analysis reveals that a solid solution is formed throughout this composition range, whilst thermogravimetric data reveal sulfur deficiency of up to 2.9% in the quaternary phases. Magnetic measurements suggest that the ferromagnetic behavior of the end-member phase GaV4S8 is retained at x≤0.7; samples in this composition range showing a marked increase in magnetization at low temperatures. By contrast Ga0.25Ge0.75V4S8−δ appears to undergo antiferromagnetic ordering at ca. 15 K. All materials with x≠1 are n-type semiconductors whose resistivity falls by almost six orders of magnitude with decreasing Ga content, whilst the end-member phase GeV4S8−δ is a p-type semiconductor. The results demonstrate that the physical properties are determined principally by the degree of electron filling of narrow-band states arising from intracluster V–V interactions.