Microbiome Systems Biology in the Arumugam Group

The Arumugam Group investigates how health and diseases are influenced by our gut microbiome; how the gut microbiome interacts with the host and environmental factors; and how we can therapeutically modulate the gut microbiome to improve health.

Research focus

Lifestyle changes and lack of physical activity are important factors involved in metabolic disorders. However, emerging evidence suggests that our gut microbiome and their interactions with us play an important role in our health and well-being. An imbalance in the gut microbiome may signify an unhealthy state of the host and contribute to obesity and diabetes pathogenesis.

The Arumugam Group aims to study the interactions between the host and the gut microbiome in order to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying metabolic disorders. The Group takes interdisciplinary approaches combining multi-omics microbiome data to study host-microbial cross-talk. The Group also investigates therapeutic approaches to modulate the gut microbiome towards improving human health.

Main findings

“Enterotypes of the human gut microbiome”
Published in Nature in 2011, this study combines sequenced faecal metagenomes of individuals with previously published data sets and identifies three enterotypes that are not nation or continent specific.

“Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery of morbidly obese patients shows swift and persistent changes of the individual gut microbiota”
Published in Genome Medicine in 2016, this study describes the changes in gut microbial taxonomic composition and functional potential following Roux-en-Y gastric bypass in morbidly obese patients.

“Metagenomic analysis of fecal microbiome as a tool towards targeted non-invasive biomarkers for colorectal cancer”
Published in Gut in 2017, this study presents the first metagenomic profiling study of colorectal cancer faecal microbiomes to discover and validate microbial biomarkers in ethnically different cohorts, and to independently validate selected biomarkers using an affordable clinically relevant technology.

Staff of the Arumugam group

Group leader: Associate Professor Manimozhiyan Arumugam