The human gut microbiota plays an i

The human gut microbiota plays an important role in host health,and its composition and function are affected by the host's diet. Shoaie et al. (2015) developed a PLM for this system that included multiple species, each with a genome-scale metabolism model. They compared the model output with observations of 16S rRNA and metabolite concentrations from in vitro laboratory experiments and an in vivo clinical weight-loss study (see figures 2b and 5 in Shoaie et al. 2015). The model was able to capture many of the observed patterns among the two test groups (those with low and high gene counts) and due to dietary intervention, such as the decrease in the metabolite proline in both groups and the larger degree of this decrease in the low-gene-count group.