Impact of early life diet on microbiome development & later health

This project was part of a Joint programming Initiative on Healthy Diet - Healthy Life, involving 3 partner organisations (1). Dr Harry Sokol at Sokol from the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) and the French Medical Research Institute (INSERM), (2) Dr Elena Verdu, Famcombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute at McMaster University, Canada and (3) Prof Jerry Wells, Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands. The intestinal metabolism of tryptophan, an essential amino acid and important component of our diet is perturbed in intestinal diseases (such as inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome), but also in some non-intestinal diseases. In the gut, tryptophan can be transformed by certain intestinal bacteria into several molecules some of which promote a healthy intestine and immune system through interaction with a host receptor called the arylhydrocarbon receptor (AhR). In this project we obtained further evidence that a harmless Lactobacilus bacterium with a strong and natural ability to produce beneficial metabolites of tryptophan or the metabolites themselves, can have beneficial effects in certain diseases where the gut bacteria have a reduced capacity to produce tryptophan metabolites interacting with AhR.