Abstract

The gut microbiota is vital for digestive health and immune function. However, current research tends to focus on individual microbial strains, missing the broader understanding of the entire ecosystem. Constructing microbial networks is key to understanding how these communities form, but existing methods have limitations, prompting the need for new approaches. By merging concepts from evolutionary game theory, predator-prey dynamics, and graph theory, we developed an ecological network featuring directionality, symbols, and weights. This groundbreaking model overcomes previous limitations, enabling us to reconstruct comprehensive, dynamic, and personalized networks (idopNetwork) from static abundance data. We applied this approach to examine interactions among microbial strains in the gut microbiota of both healthy individuals and those with inflammatory bowel disease. This method deepens our understanding of microbial operations within the ecosystem, particularly across various disease states. Such insights offer crucial guidance for tailoring precise microbiota-based therapies for these conditions.

Speaker Info.

Jianan Yin, a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University. His main research focuses include: high-throughput screening of functional gut microbiota, understanding microbial interactions in the gut and their ecological significance, investigating regulatory mechanisms governing microbial community functionality, and employing rational design principles for constructing synthetic microbial communities.