AN INVESTIGATION OF COMMON AND DISEASE-SPECIFIC HOST GENE EXPRESSION–MICROBIOME CORRELATIONS AMONG HUMAN DISORDERS: LABORATORY BASED EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Human health and disease are significantly influenced by the human gut microbiota. Although host gene regulation and the gut microbiota each cause gastrointestinal problems on their own, it is unknown how the two could communicate to affect host pathophysiology. In order to assess matched host transcriptome (n = 50) and gut microbiome (n = 50) profiles from colonic mucosal samples of patients with colorectal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and irritable bowel syndrome concurrently, we have created a machine learning-based system. We found correlations between host genes and gut microorganisms that show both common and disease-specific patterns. We discovered that gut microorganisms specific to a certain disease share a common set of host genes and pathways implicated in gastrointestinal inflammation, gut barrier protection, and energy metabolism. Furthermore, we discovered that mucosal gut microbes, like Streptococcus, linked to distinct host pathways in each disease, indicating that similar microbes can influence host pathophysiology through the regulation of distinct host genes in a disease-specific way. Our methodology can be used to find host gene–microbiome relationships that could affect the course of various diseases.