Breaking bugs: gut microbes metabolize dietary components and modulate vascular health

AbstractGut microbiota modulates host physiology and pathophysiology through the production of microbial metabolites. Diet is a crucial factor in shaping the microbiome, and gut microbes interact with the host by producing beneficial or detrimental diet-derived microbial metabolites. Evidence from our lab and others indicates that the interaction between diet and gut microbes plays a pivotal role in modulating vascular health. Diet-derived microbial metabolites such as short-chain fatty acids and metabolites of phenolic acids improve vascular health, whereas trimethylamine oxide and certain amino acid-derived microbial metabolites impair the vasculature. These metabolites have been shown to regulate blood pressure, vascular inflammation, and atherosclerosis by acting on multiple targets. Nonetheless, there are substantial gaps in knowledge within this field. The microbial enzymes essential for the production of diet-derived metabolites, the role of the food matrix in regulating the bioavailability of metabolites, and the structure-activity relationships between metabolites and biomolecules in the vasculature are largely unknown. Potential diet-derived metabolites to improve vascular health can be identified through future studies that investigate the causal relationship between dietary components, gut microbes, diet-derived metabolites, and vascular health by using radiolabeled compounds, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics techniques.Keywords: Amino acid-derived metabolitesdiet-derived microbial metabolitesgut microbespolyphenolsshort-chain fatty acidstrimethylamine oxide AcknowledgmentsFigure 1 was partly generated using Servier Medical Art, provided by Servier, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported license.Disclosure statementThe authors declare that they have no competing interests. All authors have read and approved the submission of the manuscript and have provided consent for publication.Additional informationFundingPVAB is supported by the National Institute of Health under Grant No. R01AT010247 and USDA-National Institute of Foods and Agriculture under Grant No. 2019-67017-29253.