BBSRC Institute Strategic Programme: Food Microbiome and Health (FMH) - Partner Grant

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Globally, poor diet accounts for 10 million (22%) of all adult deaths (every yearwith cardiovascular disease as the leading cause. The UK has both the highest obesity rates and worst healthy lifeexpectancy in Europe, hence the urgent need to switch to a more nutritionally balanced diet. Growing environmental,ethical and health concerns are motivating transition to plant-rich diets, a trend that will increase because of globalpopulation and climate change. The changes in our dietary habits provide unique opportunities for designing novel plantbasedfoods that improve health. However, this dietary shift also brings challenges as plant-based diets contain processedcarbohydrate-rich foods with high glycaemic/ calorie content that tend to have lower availability of key macronutrients, suchas protein, micronutrients including vitamins D and B12, and minerals such as iron, zinc and iodine. Many of the nutrientchallenges associated with plant-based diets are being addressed through processes such as biofortification and newtechnologies such as gene-editing. There is need to understand the effect of these approaches not only on food structureand composition, but also how they impact the GI microbiome and host responses.Strategy, aims and objectives: A key, achievable strategy for addressing these challenges is to focus on the relationshipsbetween plant-based food, the GI microbiome and human health. Consequently, our overall aim is to unpick thecomplicated relationship between particular plant-based foods, GI microbes and health through mechanistic research intothese interactions.The FMH ISP is organised into four themes (Ts) comprising targeted objectives that reflect the pathway and processing ofplant-based food by the body to provide health benefits:- T1 Food structure/composition/digestion and nutrient release in the GIT;- T2 Role of plant-based foods and macro- and micro-nutrients on the GIT microbiota structure and function;- T3 How nutrients impact on the integrity and physiology of key organ systems e.g. the GIT itself, liver and brain;- T4 Exploiting the knowledge gained from our mechanistic studies to evaluate new food and microbiota-basedinterventions that promote or improve long-life health in proof-of-concept human trials.Our research aims to provide a mechanistic understanding of how the structure and composition of plant-based foods canbe used to improve health and reduce the threat of disease through its interaction with the GIT microbiome. The ISP isorganised into four themes (Ts) with state-of-the-art, specialist and enabling technologies.In T1, we will use plant-based foods that can be modified through gene editing/ biofortification/ processing to determinehow these foods are digested and the released nutrients transformed and/or absorbed throughout the GIT using QIB'sunique in vitro digestion and intestinal fermentation models (e.g. SHIME); food analytics; metabolomics and vitamindiagnostics.