The human gastrointestinal tract harbors a diverse ecosystem of commensal microbes that play an integral role in human health. Alterations to microbial composition, including those driven through diet or medication, are associated with a plethora of diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes and obesity. There is limited knowledge on how nutrient availability impacts the growth of individual bacterial species and underpins bacterial community structures within the gastrointestinal tract. This has restricted our ability for targeted modulation of the microbiome composition and structure, through dietary interventions and therapeutics, for the treatment of microbiome-related diseases.
Applying a novel high-throughput screening technique, we aimed to undertake functional analysis of members of the microbiota to enhance understandings of how nutrient availability impacts microbiome community structure. Initial phenotypic analysis of 23 common gastrointestinal isolates was performed to assess the nutrient requirements of these bacteria. This analysis has identified growth variation, carbohydrate dependencies and antibacterial activity of phenolic compounds in these isolates for the first time. This provides fundamental knowledge to understand how specific nutritional changes may cause species-level microbiome alterations. Future community level, multi-omic analysis, in the context of this understanding, will provide the potential to elucidate the role of dietary interventions in manipulating the microbiome.