Co-Culture Studies using Human Colonic Organoids with Anaerobic Gut Bacteria

Abstract

The gut microbiota is a complex ecosystem composed of microorganisms in the digestive tract, and it is involved in maintaining our health and the development of various diseases. Behind the proliferation of studies of the gut microbiota are important technologies for understanding the function of gut bacteria, such as metagenomic analysis by next-generation sequencers or gnotobiotic animal models. However, the detailed molecular mechanism of the interaction between host cells and intestinal bacteria remains unknown due to the lack of an in vitro co-culturing system. Although co-culturing host cells together with gut bacteria has been considered difficult because they have different oxygen demand characteristics, interdisciplinary research, covering organoids (stem cell biology), microfluidic devices (engineering), and microbiology have enabled the generation of novel organoid-culturing systems of human host cells with anaerobic gut bacteria. Therefore, expectations are high that these co-culturing systems will be used in the future to reveal the molecular basis of the symbiotic relationships between host and micro-organisms.