"Personalized nutrition using gut microbiome and clinical data"
Abstract
Elevated blood glucose levels are rapidly increasing in the general population, resulting in a sharp incline in the prevalence of pre-diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance, and eventual development of type II diabetes mellitus. Dietary intake is considered a central determinant of glucose levels, with high post-meal glucose levels affecting weight gain, obesity, hunger, energy dips, and being associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and overall mortality. However, despite their importance, existing dietary methods for controlling post-meal glucose levels have limited efficacy. By continuously monitoring week-long glucose levels in over 1,000 people, we found high variability in the response of different people to identical meals, suggesting that generic population-wide dietary recommendations have limited utility and are ineffective in achieving proper glycemic control. We devised a machine-learning algorithm that integrates blood parameters, dietary habits, anthropometrics, physical activity, and gut microbiota measured in this cohort and showed that it accurately predicts personalized postprandial glucose responses to real-life meals. Moreover, a blinded randomized controlled dietary intervention based on this algorithm resulted in significantly lower postprandial responses in a cohort of pre-diabetics and consistent alterations to gut microbiota configuration. These results suggest that personalized diets may successfully modify elevated postprandial blood glucose and its metabolic consequences. I will also present our studies of the mechanisms driving recurrent post-dieting obesity in which we identified an intestinal microbiome signature that persists after successful dieting of obese mice. This microbiome signature contributes to faster weight regain and metabolic aberrations upon re-exposure to obesity-promoting conditions and transmits the accelerated weight regain phenotype upon inter-animal transfer. Notably, a microbiome-based machine-learning algorithm enabled personalized prediction of the extent of post-dieting weight regain. We further find that the microbiome contributes to diminished post-dieting flavonoid levels and reduced energy expenditure, and demonstrate that flavonoid-based ‘post-biotic’ intervention ameliorates excessive secondary weight gain. These results thus highlight a possible microbiome contribution to accelerated post-dieting weight regain, and suggest that microbiome-targeting approaches may help to diagnose and treat this common disorder.
Speaker Bio
Eran Segal is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, heading a lab with a multi-disciplinary team of computational biologists and experimental scientists in the area of Computational and Systems biology. His group has extensive experience in machine learning, computational biology, probabilistic models, and analysis of heterogeneous high-throughput genomic data. His research focuses on Nutrition, Genetics, Microbiome, and Gene Regulation and their effect on health and disease. His aim is to develop personalized nutrition and personalized medicine. Prof. Segal has published over 120 publications, and received several awards and honors for his work, including the Overton prize, awarded annually by the International Society for Bioinformatics (ICSB) to one scientist for outstanding accomplishments in computational biology; and the Michael Bruno award. He was recently elected as an EMBO member and as a member of the young Israeli academy of science. Before joining the Weizmann Institute, Prof. Segal held an independent research position at Rockefeller University, New York.