Scientists decode diet of stool DNA, no questions asked

Scientists have developed a breakthrough method to keep up with diet with the help of stools metagenomic data.

Developed by researchers from the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), the new method, called Medi (metagenomic estimate of nutrients intake), detecting food-disposed DNA in relief samples to estimate the intake of the diet. Medi uses stool Metagenomics, which refers to the sequencing of all the DNA present in faecal samples (including microbial, human and food derived DNA). This non-invasive, data-driven approach offers an objective alternative to traditional food days and questionnaires, which are still the gold standard in the food assessment, but can suffer from wrong reporting and compliance with.

The full study is published in Nature metabolism.

“For decades, food research has been dependent on self-reported diaries and questionnaires approaches that require a high degree of effort and compliance with research participants. How many strawberries did I eat two days ago? Did I have one glass of orange juice with breakfast with breakfast, or two?” Dr. Christian Diever, main author of the study. “Medi offers a solution by analyzing food-disposed of DNA in intestinal metagenomic samples, and offers a handy alternative that shows a good agreement with well-known nutrition and nutrition patterns.”

Most important findings:

• An alternative to following a questionnaire: the use of a database of more than 400 food products and more than 300 billion bases of genomic information, Medi detected food intake patterns accurately with infants and adults, and over two controlled food studies. Medi
• Connecting the intake of nutrients with nutrition: Medi converts the relative abundance profile of specific food products into nutrients, based on a part of 100 grams. These nutrients profiles show a good agreement with data from controlled nutritional investigations.
• Identified diet-related health risks: without food logs, mediated media-enforcement food characteristics coupled to metabolic syndrome in a large clinical cohort.

“Our study represents a big leap forward in how we follow the diet and its impact on human health,” said ISB university headerist Dr. Sean Gibbons, senior author of the study. “With food-derived DNA signatures in stool, we now have a powerful way to measure diet and microbioma composition from the same monster that will increase our understanding of the forces that form human intestinal microbiome, personalized nutrition reactions and disease risk.”

With further development, Medi could transform nutritional sciences, epidemiological studies and clinical studies, allowing researchers, doctors and individuals to follow diet -related health risks with unprecedented ease.

Offered by Institute for Systems Biology