Fig. 1
From: The complexities of the diet-microbiome relationship: advances and perspectives
Understanding interactions between microbes, the microbiome, and the host both locally and systemically to enable its manipulation in order to improve human health. Suggested approaches for the characterisation of (1) intra-microbe interactions include in vitro mono- and co-culture systems; (2) inter-microbe interactions include in vitro co-culture and mass culture systems alongside quorum sensors to detect autoinducers that orchestrate collective behaviours [36, 37]; (3) communities include in vitro synthetic continuous communities with novel microarray technologies [38]; (4) spatial organisation include confocal microscopy integrated with multi-dimension algorithms alongside multi-omic technologies [39]; and (5) local host-microbe interactions include in vivo animal models accompanied by metabolomics providing a direct functional output of the metabolite profile, a result of local-host-microbial interactions [40], whereby the simultaneous profiling and integration of various -omic technologies is necessary to then identify (6) interactions at the molecular level systemically [40]. Image created with Biorender.com