Frontiers in Nutrition (Feb 2016)

Modeling-Enabled Systems Nutritional Immunology

  • Meghna eVerma,
  • Meghna eVerma,
  • Raquel eHontecillas,
  • Raquel eHontecillas,
  • Vida eAbedi,
  • Vida eAbedi,
  • Andrew eLeber,
  • Andrew eLeber,
  • Nuria eTubau-Juni,
  • Nuria eTubau-Juni,
  • Casandra ePhilipson,
  • Adria eCarbo,
  • Josep eBassaganya-Riera,
  • Josep eBassaganya-Riera

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2016.00005
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 3

Abstract

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This review highlights the fundamental role of nutrition in the maintenance of health, the immune response and disease prevention. Emerging global mechanistic insights in the field of nutritional immunology cannot be gained through reductionist methods alone or by analyzing a single nutrient at a time. We propose to investigate nutritional immunology as a massively interacting system of interconnected multistage and multiscale networks that encompass hidden mechanisms by which nutrition, microbiome, metabolism, genetic predisposition and the immune system interact to delineate health and disease. The review sets an unconventional path to applying complex science methodologies to nutritional immunology research, discovery and development through ‘use cases’ centered around the impact of nutrition on the gut microbiome and immune responses. Our systems nutritional immunology analyses, that include modeling and informatics methodologies in combination with pre-clinical and clinical studies, have the potential to discover emerging systems-wide properties at the interface of the immune system, nutrition, microbiome, and metabolism.

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