Fine-tuning dietary fibre to target gut microbiota accessibility

该项目将探索来自天然基质的益生元纤维的生物可及性及其对人类肠道微生物群的可及性。大多数关于益生元（低聚果糖（FOS）、低聚半乳糖（GOS）、低聚阿拉伯糖（AXOS））功效的证据都是使用提取和高度精制的低聚物进行整理的。人们越来越重视最低限度加工的食品，远离高度精制的材料将满足这一需求。控制组成低聚物的可及性的天然植物基起始材料的这种最小加工可以包括发酵、酶的使用、诸如脉冲电场和热/物理机械预加工的技术以及起始材料的成熟度。这些过程将改变“母体”多糖的聚合度和天然基质中寡糖的扩散率-这微调了肠道微生物群对纤维的可及性。该项目将使用人类肠道微生物群模型，结合尖端的代谢组学和宏基因组学，研究纤维加工对肠道微生物群组成和微生物可及性的影响。因此，该项目位于物理科学和微生物组科学之间的界面，将对纤维来源及其通过预加工控制的程度进行创新性比较，以测量对肠道发酵的影响，以及随后对肠道微生物群和代谢标志物的影响。

The project will explore the bioaccessibility of prebiotic fibres from natural matrices and their accessibility to the human gut microbiota. Most of the evidence on the efficacy of prebiotics (fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS), arabinoxylan-oligosaccharides (AXOS)) has been collated using the extracted and highly refined oligomers. There is an increasing emphasis on minimally processed foods and moves away from highly refined materials would meet this need. Such minimal processing of natural plant-based starting materials which control the accessibility of the constituent oligomers might include fermentation, the use of enzymes, technologies such as pulse electric fields and thermo/physico mechanical pre-processing and the degree of ripening of the starting material. These processes will create changes in both the degree of polymerization of the 'parent' polysaccharide and the diffusivity of the oligosaccharides from the natural matrices - which fine-tunes accessibility of the fibre by the gut microbiota. This project will use models of the human gut microbiota combined with cutting-edge metabolomics and metagenomics to study the impact of processing of fibre on gut microbiota composition and microbial accessibility.The project therefore sits at the interface between physical sciences and microbiome science and will an innovative comparison of fibre sources and the extent to which they can be controlled through pre-processing, to measure the effect on in gut fermentation, and subsequent effects on the gut microbiota and metabolic markers.