NEW PUBLICATIONS: Colon plays a distinctive role in metabolism of food components

Wednesday, 28 May 2008 10:42

Two publications demonstrate the importance of colonic microbiota in formation of circulating metabolites in human body.

Review article Aura (2008) deals with microbial metabolism of dietary phenolic compounds, which reach the colon as enclosed in dietary fibre matrix from plant foods such as berries, fruits and wholegrain products. A vast knowledge was already gathered in 1960´s to 1980´s of microbial metabolism of xenobiotic compounds, including dietary phenolics, after which the interest was focused on antioxidant activities of these compounds. However, demonstration of antioxidant activity has been demanding, because the compounds disappear from circulation and a diverse metabolite pool appears to be circulating in the body. Microbial metabolites have been shown from in vitro incubations with animal or human faecal microbiota and the same metabolites were also found in human plasma and urine. Novel tools using metabolomic platforms enable observation of the whole metabolome instead of limited number of expected metabolites.

Research article by Aura et al. (2008) demonstrates that there are differences in microbial metabolism of catechin stereoisomers, however, the most important factor affecting the transformation of catechins is the microbiota used as an inoculum. Each individual has a microbiota of their own and this causes large qualitative and quantitative individual differences in the circulating metabolome. Thus colon model coupled with metabolomics platform is an excellent tool in identifying food derived microbial metabolites circulating in the human body. Personalized metabolical patterns can be identified once the possible metabolites are demonstrated for each food component.

For more information contact
Anna-Marja Aura
Senior Research Scientist, D. Sc. (Tech)
VTT
P.O.Box 1000; 02044 VTT
Tel: + 358 40 820 8731
Fax: + 358 20 722 7071
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