Project Details
Projekt
In depth characterization of Gut microbial Sulfometabolome in a mouse model of Crohn´s Disease
Applicant
Professor Dr. Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin
Subject Area
Nutritional Sciences
Term
from 2013 to 2017
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 237719323
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) refer to intestinal chronic diseases and main forms are Crohn´s disease and ulcerative colitis in which lot of research is invested to reveal the genetic and environmental risk factors. Recently, our group showed the importance of applying metabolomics to describe biomarkers in fecal samples associated with Crohn´s disease in humans using high resolution mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) (J. Jansson et al. 2009). Our group pinpointed different pathways that are regulated between healthy and Crohn´s disease humans from which some involve many on-identified sulfur containing metabolites. Several other studies were performing a metabolite profiling approach to study the impact of the metabolome in IBD. Our aim of the present project is to investigate this specific role of sulfur and its involvement in Crohn´s disease etiology. Thereby, we want to crystallize the central role of bacterial metabolism in the intestine in Crohn´s disease mouse model to elucidate microbial metabolome between healthy and inflamed mice. Moreover, we are concerned about the functional role of sulfur and sulfur containing metabolites and the impact on intestinal microbiota, which are assumed to be one of the important environmental factors which are involved in the pathogenesis of IBD. Furthermore, we want to point out the linkage between sulfur metabolism and the host – gut microbiome axis between healthy and inflamed mice by using specific mouse colonization studies. The implementation of high resolution mass spectrometry and NMR techniques by applying a metabolomics approach will support us to understand the sulfur involvement in an intestinal inflammation in a complex mammalian organism.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
