Measuring the impact of dietary change on human gut microbial communities

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Aims: This project is to verify a proposed new reporting tool for determining changes in human gut communities (gut microbiome) after dietary interventions. Theory: The inclusion of fibre in the diet is associated with gut health. This is because fibre reaches the large intestine and feeds the resident microorganisms. These microorganisms in turn produce substances that benefit human health such as short-chain fatty acids. However the production of these substances varies with the types of organisms present and this in turn is dependent on the types of foods consumed. We can see these changes when different diets are consumed and these changes occur within a day of changing a diet. This gives us a valuable tool to determine which foods produce beneficial changes. However current methods of reporting changes to the microbiome are overly complex and do not provide a picture of changing gut communities that is readably visualised or rendered in a format understandable to lay persons wishing to understand how the foods they consume affect their gut communities. Methodology: The current project seeks volunteers to consume low and high fibre diets and collect a swab from their first daily faecal sample. The swab will be analysed to determine the relative abundance of each type of bacteria by modern sequencing techniques. The abundance of each type of bacteria will be compared to their base line sample, collected before they start the diet, Each type of bacteria has known associations with low-fibre or high fibre and the total number of types showing positive shifts in abundance will be tallied and graphed against those showing negative shifts. It is hoped that this new simplified way of reporting changes associated with diets will help people better visualise the important benefits of changing their diet through the effects seen on changing the gut community.

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