The gut feeling – where it all began

For years, we have known that the billions of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms that live within us – known collectively as the microbiome – help in myriad ways to keep our bodies healthy. On the flip side, an unbalanced microbiome can foster or even directly drive a disease state. How do commensal microbes exert their beneficial and harmful effects on the health of the host? Small molecule metabolites are one of the primary mechanisms for the interaction between microbial and host cells, as well as among the organisms within a microbial community. Naturally, at Metabolon, we are focused on discovering these mechanisms through the power of metabolomics, to help our clients understand how the microbiome functions in health and disease and how new treatments can restore balance to an unhealthy microbiome.

The gut has been the long-time hotbed of microbiome research, and with good reason: each of our intestinal tracts harbors several pounds of microbes that can affect everything from weight management to brain function and even the effectiveness of certain cancer therapies. Metabolon has been at the forefront of illuminating how small-molecule metabolites – known collectively as the metabolome – mediate these effects and how those insights can translate into new treatments for diseases that involve the gut. But what about the microbiome of other body locations, particularly our largest organ – the skin?

The microbiome of our body’s largest organ

Like the gut, the skin is an immunological barrier where conditions ranging from acne to psoriasis and atopic dermatitis can result from either unchecked microbial infection or inappropriate immune system activation. We know from gut studies that an individual’s microbiome, as well as genetics and environmental exposure, can strongly influence his or her predisposition to these disease-prone states. Importantly, while not as numerous as those of the gut, skin-resident microbes offer a similar or even greater level of phylogenetic diversity, depending on the skin site. Finally, just like in the gut, the skin microbiome also displays immense interpersonal variation, even among healthy individuals. Therefore, merely enumerating who comprises the microbiome, i.e., the species present at a given skin site, is not enough to understand skin conditions and diseases. At Metabolon, we believe metabolomics – measuring the small-molecule signatures of the microbiome’s activity – will produce critical insights into what a healthy skin microbiome is doing and how balance can be restored to unhealthy skin.

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