Alexandra Kolas

Obesity has become a worldwide epidemic, and while factors such as diet, a sedentary lifestyle, and genetic predisposition are known to be causes of obesity, it is becoming apparent that the human microbiome may play a role as well (Vallianou et al., 2019). One genus in the human microbiome that is known to decrease in abundance in obese people compared to non-obese people is Faecalibacterium (De Filippis et al., 2020). However, it is not known whether any metabolic changes are occurring in this microbe to warrant this change in abundance. It is known that certain metabolites produced by the microbiome are found in different amounts in obese people compared to non-obese people, such as fecal short chain fatty acids (SFCAs) and plasma total bile acids. To investigate these questions, I used metabolic modeling to compare the metabolisms of several Faecalibacterium clades under different diets associated with obese and non-obese lifestyles. I used metabolic models of these Faecalibacterium clades, which were built from genome sequences from a study by De Filippis et al. I ran the flux-balance analyses on these models using COBRApy to computationally model the growth and metabolism of these different strains on an Unhealthy human diet and a European Union (EU) standard human diet from Virtual Metabolic Human. Ultimately, I found that growth rates decreased slightly in all clades that were grown on the Unhealthy diet compared to the European Union standard diet. Currently, I am investigating whether specific metabolites change in these models under the different diets.