Breaking bad: Do high-fat diets trigger ubiquitous bacteria to become bad?

We are what we eat. The food we consume shapes our gut microbiota, which in turn plays a key role in health and disease. Bilophila is a resident of the human gut microbiome and is a member of sulphite-reducing bacteria (SRB) that release the toxic molecule hydrogen sulphide (H2S) as a byproduct. H2S has been linked to colonic disorders and gut inflammation. High-fat diets are becoming more prevalent. Meat based high-fat diets are enriched with specific amino acids and in animal studies they are shown to promote the growth of Bilophila. However, their impact in humans is not yet established. Intriguingly, our recent work on cultivation and diversity analyses revealed that Bilophila is a common member of the human gut microbiome. This raises the following questions: are they detrimental to us? Can we develop specific diets or other intervention strategies to control their population? This multidisciplinary project aims to understand the dynamics of Bilophila in the gut microbiome and its relationship to diet and gut health using in vitro colon models, tissue culture, metagenomics, and metabolomics.