An in silico analysis of bacteriocin production in the human microbiota and its relationship with health

Walsh, Calum J.

Restricted to everyone for five years. Restriction lift date: 2022-09-18T11:06:16Z

An in silico analysis of bacteriocin production in the human microbiota and its relationship with health

dc.check.chapterOfThesis	5
dc.check.date	2022-09-18T11:06:16Z
dc.check.embargoformat	Both hard copy thesis and e-thesis	en
dc.check.info	Restricted to everyone for five years	en
dc.check.opt-out	Yes	en
dc.check.reason	This thesis contains information that was provided in confidence	en
dc.contributor.advisor	Cotter, Paul D.	en
dc.contributor.advisor	O'Toole, Paul W.	en
dc.contributor.advisor	Ross, R. Paul	en
dc.contributor.author	Walsh, Calum J.
dc.contributor.funder	Science Foundation Ireland	en
dc.date.accessioned	2017-09-19T11:06:16Z
dc.date.issued	2017
dc.date.submitted	2017
dc.description.abstract	Advances in computing power and metagenomic sequencing have facilitated the sourcing of a wealth of evidence to support the long-held belief that the complex community of microorganisms inhabiting the human gastrointestinal tract has significant influence on the health of the host. Equally, disruption of the composition and function of this population has been associated with many disease states. Therefore, it stands to reason that selective modulation of the gut microbiota, through antimicrobials, probiotics, or diet, presents an attractive therapeutic approach to the treatment of these diseases. One category of antimicrobials with this potential is the bacteriocins – antimicrobial peptides produced by many lineages of bacteria that kill or inhibit the growth of specific competitors. This thesis focuses primarily on the first step toward harnessing the bacteriocin-producing capacity of the human microbiota to bring about desired changes, i.e., identification of potential bacteriocin-producing bacteria using in silico genomic and metagenomic screening approaches. It highlights numerous putative bacteriocin-producing bacteria, including many from genera either not previously associated with bacteriocin-production or recently under consideration as the next generation of probiotics. It also investigates the relationship between diet, the gut microbiota, and bacteriocin gene cluster density in elite athletes and healthy controls, in addition to evaluating the effect of probiotic supplementation of the gut microbiota and overall health in a diet-induced obesity mouse model. Taken together these results show that there is a vast reservoir of putative bacteriocin-producing bacteria in the human microbiota with the potential to impact human health in a beneficial manner and highlights diet as a major factor in influencing the density and distribution of these putative producers.	en
dc.description.status	Not peer reviewed	en
dc.description.version	Accepted Version
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.citation	Walsh, C. 2017. An in silico analysis of bacteriocin production in the human microbiota and its relationship with health. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.	en
dc.identifier.endpage	275	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10468/4708
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.publisher	University College Cork	en
dc.relation.project	info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/SFI/SFI Principal Investigator Programme (PI)/11/PI/1137/IE/Obesibiotics/	en
dc.rights	© 2017, Calum Walsh.	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/	en
dc.subject	Bioinformatics	en
dc.subject	Microbiota	en
dc.subject	Bacteriocin	en
dc.thesis.opt-out	true
dc.title	An in silico analysis of bacteriocin production in the human microbiota and its relationship with health	en
dc.type	Doctoral thesis	en
dc.type.qualificationlevel	Doctoral	en
dc.type.qualificationname	PhD (Science)	en