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Gut microbiome: a biomedical revolution

To mark the twentieth anniversary of Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology, we asked three experts to comment on how the gut microbiome has transformed our understanding of biology and the strengths and limitations of microbiome research today as well as to look ahead at what the next 20 years of microbiome research and clinical applications might look like.

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Acknowledgements

M.C.C. would like to acknowledge support from H2020-ERC Starting Grant (MAMI-639226 project), Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN) research grant (ref. PID2022-139475OB-I00), and an award from the Spanish Government MCIN/Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) to the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology – National Research Council as Centre of Excellence Severo Ochoa (CEX2021-001189-S MCIN/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033). T.S.G. acknowledges the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India for the Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship (BT/HRD/35/02/2006) and Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology-Delhi for a Research Initiation Grant.

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Maria Carmen Collado is a Full Research Professor at the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology – National Research Council (IATA-CSIC), Valencia, Spain, and Docent (adjunct professor) of the University of Turku, Finland. Her research work is multidisciplinary and includes microbiology, food science and nutrition areas, and her research interests are focused on the effect of diet and microbiota interactions on maternal and infant health during the early-life period as well as across the lifespan of women. Twitter/X: @mcarmen_collado

Suzanne Devkota is an Associate Professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Director of the Human Microbiome Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Her lab studies microbial mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel diseases and dietary modulation of the gut microbiome.

Tarini Shankar Ghosh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computational Biology at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, India. His lab uses a combination of statistical, machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to understand microbiome assembly and stability, the generic markers of health and disease, and their correlation with environment and lifestyle. Twitter/X: @tarini_ghosh

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Correspondence to Maria Carmen Collado, Suzanne Devkota or Tarini Shankar Ghosh.

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Collado, M.C., Devkota, S. & Ghosh, T.S. Gut microbiome: a biomedical revolution. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 21, 830–833 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41575-024-01001-3

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