Concluding thoughts

Concluding thoughts

Microbiome is highly complex and varied between individuals. We are not yet able to define a “healthy” microbiome i.e. a baseline. Going forward we should perhaps try to define “reference populations”.

Guidelines on specification, or an ‘average’ characterisation including parameters, ranges, diversity and species information. Defining a ‘range’ of microbiomes e.g. structure, function might help identify what types of microbiomes increase the risk of adverse effects.

Investigate how microorganisms process chemicals, considering the chemical conversions that occur in the gut including toxicokinetics e.g. metabolism of xenobiotics into toxic metabolites and how this might be considered in an assessment.

Continue the development of integrative multi-omics approaches, to provide comprehensive and holistic understanding of host microbiome interactions. Functional studies in vitro can complement in vivo investigations.

Challenge in trying to distinguish between causality, correlation or association.

Increase in databases with microbiological, metabolome and genomic data, where AI can be utilised to process information and extract relevant trends or results.