Looking at the gut microbiota with CAZy eyes

Over the years, the CAZy database has been utilized to annotate tens of thousands of genomes. This database can also be harnessed to analyze complex datasets on the breakdown of polysaccharides by the gut microbiota. The Gordon lab at Washington University in St Louis has utilized powerful omics methods (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and metabolomics) to identify which bacterial species, and their specific strains, are positively associated with a nutritional intervention designed to repair the microbiota of malnourished children. To identify the particular dietary glycans that may be responsible for the observed effects, expert CAZyme annotation was performed to identify the polysaccharide-utilization loci (PULs) that are conserved in the best performing strains and absent in the other strains [1,2]. The CAZymes encoded by these PULs are being produced and biochemically characterized at DTU; I will present our first results.