Functional profiling of microbiota in the human gut

This project aims at using compositional profiles from gut microbiota to infer functional profiles, on the levels of estimated gene content and their predicted functions. This DNA-based functional profiling taking into account prior knowledge about genome sequences of human gut microbiota. From several cooperating projects we collect single additional measured functional microbiota data (from deep meta-genome-wide NGS, from meta-transcriptomics, meta-proteomics, and meta-metabolomics) – to ultimately optimize the functional profiling as predicted from sequence data. Features of functional profiling are envisioned to play an important role for translational research, for development of diagnostic approaches (disease subtypes, therapy monitoring), and towards therapy (e.g. for re-establishing healthy microbiota functional profiles by fecal transplantation).