Deciphering Host-Gut Microbiota Communication in Immunity and Disease

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Background

The gut microbiota, defined by the micro-organisms that inhabit the gastrointestinal tract, is mainly comprised of bacteria but also contains other micro-organisms such as fungi and viruses. These microorganisms do not live in isolation and have developed a bilateral relationship with their host. The discovery that the gut microbiota can profoundly influence its host physiology, and in particular the immune system has revolutionized the field of medicine. The gut microbiota composition stabilizes in humans from three years of age. The significant advances in the sequencing methods increased our understanding of the dynamic of this ecosystem highlighting significant shifts in composition in most diseases. However, a full understanding of the functional impact of the gut microbiota on its host is still missing as well as how changes in the health status in the host impact the gut microbiota.
The gut microbiota can affect the host via direct contact or via the release of by-products, such as short-chain fatty acids, secondary bile acids, indole derivatives, and amino acid tryptophan. This list is far from being exhaustive and new compounds are regularly discovered. Other by-products more complex called extracellular vesicles, which cargo bacterial DNA, protein and metabolites encapsulated in the bacterial membrane can affect host metabolic and immune status.

The goal of this Research Topic is to provide an opportunity for authors to contribute to the growing field of gut microbiota and host immunity. This topic will seek to provide new mechanisms and pathways by which the microbiota influence immunity, and how this knowledge can be manipulated for the treatment or attenuation of diseases. Importantly, it will provide a new understanding of how microbiota composition and function is regulated, via nutrition and other lifestyle factors. Overall, it will reveal new strategies to alter microbiota composition and/or function for optimizing immune responses and host health.

This research topic welcomes all articles type examining or discussing the interaction between the gut microbiota and the host immunity. These include, but are not limited to:

• Mechanistic insights into how microbial by-products regulate immune cell function and differentiation, gut homeostasis, and disease development such as autoimmune diseases, allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, infections etc.
• Clarify the impact of gut microbiota particularly viruses and fungi on host immunity
• Understand how the host’s health status affects the gut microbiota composition and function.
• Investigate how the host’s lifestyle environment such as diet, sleep pattern, and physical activity modulate the gut microbiota composition and activity.
• Empowering the gut microbiota to treat diseases or to optimize response to therapeutics using pro-, pre-or post-biotics, targeted antibiotic approaches or fecal microbiota transplant approaches.

Keywords: diet, gut microbiota, nutrition, host physiology, immunity, bacterial extracellular vesicles

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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