MATOMIC helps address the UN Sustainable Development Goal #3 - Good Health & Well-being. Although obesity is one of the most frequent non-communicable diseases in westernised countries, there are very limited options for treatment so far.
Therapy of obesity and its comorbidities can take advantage of the inherent link between the etiology of obesity and alterations in the intestinal microbiome: the obese phenotype can be transplanted with fecal microbial transplantation (FMT) with initial promise as a therapeutic option for reversing obesity.
Beyond biological safety, there are two major challenges in FMT: the mechanisms defining the stability of the transplanted microbiota are not well understood, and how the stability of the original and desirable metabolic phenotype is maintained after FMT is unclear. During FMT the transplanted community experiences a major perturbation due to the introduction of other bacterial species and thus novel metabolic networks with additional metabolites and metabolic traits.
MATOMIC addresses these challenges with mathematical models that can predict metabolic interactions both qualitatively and quantitatively. In particular, the capability is needed to analyse multi-species metabolic networks for key drivers and processes as well as functional redundancy, and to analyse and forecast the effects of various levels of perturbations (e.g., species composition, metabolic traits, nutrition) on the stability and net outflow of the metabolic networks.
We therefore set out to develop the mathematical and computational methodology for the rational design of a stable microbial community that produces a desired net metabolic output and to develop intervention procedures that modify the metabolic production of a microbial community in the desired manner.