The link between gut microbiome and brain is being slowly acknowledged due to the speculated role of resident gut microbial community in altering the functions of gut-brain axis (GBA). Recently, a number of microbial metabolites (referred to as neuro-active metabolites) produced through tryptophan metabolism have been suggested to influence the GBA. In view of this, the current study focuses on microbial tryptophan metabolism pathways which produce neuro-active metabolites. An in silico analysis was performed on bacterial genomes as well as publicly available gut microbiome data. The results provide a comprehensive catalog of the analyzed pathways across bacteria. The analysis indicates an enrichment of tryptophan metabolism pathways in five gut-associated phyla, namely, Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Fusobacteria. Further, five genera, namely, Clostridium, Burkholderia, Streptomyces, Pseudomonas, and Bacillus have been predicted to be enriched in terms of number of the analyzed tryptophan metabolism pathways, suggesting a higher potential of these bacterial groups to metabolize tryptophan in gut. Analysis of available microbiome data corresponding to gut samples from patients of neurological diseases and healthy individuals suggests probable association of different sets of tryptophan metabolizing bacterial pathways with the etiology of different diseases. The insights obtained from the present study are expected to provide directions toward designing of microbiome based diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for neurological diseases/disorders.
Dysbiosis or imbalance in the gut microbiome has been correlated with the etiology of a number of diseases/disorders. Thus, gut microbial communities can potentially be utilized for assessing the health of the human gut. Although the taxonomic composition of the microbiomes is dependent on factors such as diet, lifestyle, and geography, these microbes perform a specific set of common functions in the gut. In this study, metabolic pathway-based markers (agnostic to above-mentioned factors) specific to commensals and those specific to pathogens are utilized as indicators of gut health. Furthermore, this gut health assessment requires only a small set of features rather than complete sequencing of metagenomes. The proposed scheme can also be used to design personalized biotherapeutics, depending on functional aspects observed in an individual.
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