Eran Elinav | |
---|---|
ערן אלינב | |
Born | |
Citizenship | Israeli |
Alma mater | Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, Weizmann Institute of Science |
Organization(s) | Weizmann Institute of Science, German Cancer Research Center |
Spouse | Hila |
Children | Shira, Omri, Inbal |
Awards | Rappaport prize for biomedical research, Levinson award for basic science research, Landau prize of Immunology |
Website | www |
Eran Elinav (born 22 June 1969 in Jerusalem, Israel) is an Israeli immunologist [1] and microbiota researcher [2] at the Weizmann Institute of Science [3] and the DKFZ. [4]
He is an international scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [5] and a senior fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advance Research (CIFAR). [6]
Elinav earned a M.D. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1999. Following an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in 2000–2004.
He served as a senior physician-scientist at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center Institute of Gastroenterology and Liver Disease in 2005–2009. [2]
In 2009 Elinav earned a Ph.D. in immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science, advised by Zelig Eshhar, after developing the Chimeric Antigen Receptor Regulatory T cell (CAR-Treg) approach, [7] as treatment of inflammatory bowel disease and autoimmunity. In 2009-2012 he followed by a post-doc at Yale University, advised by Richard Anthony Flavell, in which he discovered the NLRP6 inflammasome. [8]
In 2012 Elinav moved to the Weizmann Institute of Science and in 2016 was made a professor. [3] He heads the Institute of Microbiome research [9] and the Center of Host-Pathogen Interaction Research at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Microbiome & Cancer Division at the DKFZ. [4] Since 2022, he heads the Department of Systems Immunology, Weizmann Institute of Science.
Elinav studies the molecular basis of host-microbiota interactions, [10] and their effects of diet, [11] [12] environmental factors, [13] immune function [14] and host genetics [15] on the intestinal microbiome and associated multi-factorial metabolic, [16] [17] inflammatory, [18] malignant [19] and neurogenerative disease. [20] [21] His most-cited papers have more than 2,000 cites each. [22]
Elinav developed precision microbiota interventions, including Personalized Nutrition, [23] [24] Precision Probiotics, [25] small molecule ″postbiotics″, [12] Phage Therapy, [26] [27] autologous fecal microbiome transplantation, [28] [29] Vaginal Microbiome Transplantation (VMT) [30] [31] and gut epithelial [32] [33] interventions.
In 2014 Elinav discovered that people consuming identical foods and additives, such as non-nutritive sweeteners, [23] [34] general foods [24] and bread, [35] [36] feature a unique and personalized glycemic response, thereby potentially explaining the lack of uniform metabolic responses to generalized dietary approaches. [37] Personalized dietary recommendations, [38] based on individualized dietary, [39] clinical and microbiota data, improved pre-diabetes control. [24] He similarly showed, that consumption of probiotics [40] leads to a person-specific colonization resistance and physiological patterns. [41]
Elinav discovered, that the gut microbiota features a compositional and functional diurnal activity during a 24-hour cycle, which is dictated by host and environmental factors, mainly by the timing in food consumption. [42] [43] These microbiota diurnal activities are tightly coordinated with the host gastrointestinal and systemic circadian activity, [44] while disruption of circadian activity by jet-lag [45] or shift work may lead to alterations in the microbiota behavior, which contribute to the development of common metabolic, [43] immune [18] and liver diseases. [46] [44]
Elinav was awarded the Rappaport prize for biomedical research in 2015, [47] the Levinson award for basic science research in 2016, [48] the Landau prize of Immunology in 2018 [49] and was inducted to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2021. [50]
The human microbiome is the aggregate of all microbiota that reside on or within human tissues and biofluids along with the corresponding anatomical sites in which they reside, including the skin, mammary glands, seminal fluid, uterus, ovarian follicles, lung, saliva, oral mucosa, conjunctiva, biliary tract, and gastrointestinal tract. Types of human microbiota include bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists, and viruses. Though micro-animals can also live on the human body, they are typically excluded from this definition. In the context of genomics, the term human microbiome is sometimes used to refer to the collective genomes of resident microorganisms; however, the term human metagenome has the same meaning.
Lactobacillus acidophilus is a rod-shaped, Gram-positive, homofermentative, anaerobic microbe first isolated from infant feces in the year 1900. The species is most commonly found in humans, specifically the gastrointestinal tract, oral cavity, and vagina, as well as various fermented foods such as fermented milk or yogurt. The species most readily grows at low pH levels, and has an optimum growth temperature of 37 °C. Certain strains of L. acidophilus show strong probiotic effects, and are commercially used in dairy production. The genome of L. acidophilus has been sequenced.
Gut microbiota, gut microbiome, or gut flora, are the microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses, that live in the digestive tracts of animals. The gastrointestinal metagenome is the aggregate of all the genomes of the gut microbiota. The gut is the main location of the human microbiome. The gut microbiota has broad impacts, including effects on colonization, resistance to pathogens, maintaining the intestinal epithelium, metabolizing dietary and pharmaceutical compounds, controlling immune function, and even behavior through the gut–brain axis.
Dysbiosis is characterized by a disruption to the microbiome resulting in an imbalance in the microbiota, changes in their functional composition and metabolic activities, or a shift in their local distribution. For example, a part of the human microbiota such as the skin flora, gut flora, or vaginal flora, can become deranged, with normally dominating species underrepresented and normally outcompeted or contained species increasing to fill the void. Dysbiosis is most commonly reported as a condition in the gastrointestinal tract.
Synbiotics refer to food ingredients or dietary supplements combining probiotics and prebiotics in a form of synergism, hence synbiotics. The synbiotic concept was first introduced as "mixtures of probiotics and prebiotics that beneficially affect the host by improving the survival and implantation of live microbial dietary supplements in the gastrointestinal tract, by selectively stimulating the growth and/or by activating the metabolism of one or a limited number of health-promoting bacteria, thus improving host welfare". As of 2018, the research on this concept is preliminary, with no high-quality evidence from clinical research that such benefits exist.
The Human Microbiome Project (HMP) was a United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) research initiative to improve understanding of the microbiota involved in human health and disease. Launched in 2007, the first phase (HMP1) focused on identifying and characterizing human microbiota. The second phase, known as the Integrative Human Microbiome Project (iHMP) launched in 2014 with the aim of generating resources to characterize the microbiome and elucidating the roles of microbes in health and disease states. The program received $170 million in funding by the NIH Common Fund from 2007 to 2016.
Microbiota are the range of microorganisms that may be commensal, mutualistic, or pathogenic found in and on all multicellular organisms, including plants. Microbiota include bacteria, archaea, protists, fungi, and viruses, and have been found to be crucial for immunologic, hormonal, and metabolic homeostasis of their host.
Faecalibacterium is a genus of bacteria. The genus contains several species including Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Faecalibacterium butyricigenerans, Faecalibacterium longum, Faecalibacterium duncaniae, Faecalibacterium hattorii, and Faecalibacterium gallinarum. Its first known species, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii is gram-positive, mesophilic, rod-shaped, and anaerobic, and is one of the most abundant and important commensal bacteria of the human gut microbiota. It is non-spore forming and non-motile. These bacteria produce butyrate and other short-chain fatty acids through the fermentation of dietary fiber. The production of butyrate makes them an important member of the gut microbiota, fighting against inflammation.
Bifidobacterium is a genus of gram-positive, nonmotile, often branched anaerobic bacteria. They are ubiquitous inhabitants of the gastrointestinal tract though strains have been isolated from the vagina and mouth of mammals, including humans. Bifidobacteria are one of the major genera of bacteria that make up the gastrointestinal tract microbiota in mammals. Some bifidobacteria are used as probiotics.
Eran Segal is a computational biologist professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He works on developing quantitative models for all levels of gene regulation, including transcription, chromatin, and translation. Segal also works as an epidemiologist.
The gut–brain axis is the two-way biochemical signaling that takes place between the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system (CNS). The "microbiota–gut–brain axis" includes the role of gut microbiota in the biochemical signaling events that take place between the GI tract and the CNS. Broadly defined, the gut–brain axis includes the central nervous system, neuroendocrine system, neuroimmune systems, the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, sympathetic and parasympathetic arms of the autonomic nervous system, the enteric nervous system, vagus nerve, and the gut microbiota.
Bacteriotherapy is the purposeful use of bacteria or their products in treating an illness. Forms of bacteriotherapy include the use of probiotics, microorganisms that provide health benefits when consumed; fecal matter transplants (FMT) /intestinal microbiota transplant (IMT), the transfer of gut microorganisms from the fecal matter of healthy donors to recipient patients to restore microbiota; or synbiotics which combine prebiotics, indigestible ingredients that promote growth of beneficial microorganisms, and probiotics. Through these methods, the gut microbiota, the community of 300-500 microorganism species that live in the digestive tract of animals aiding in digestion, energy storage, immune function and protection against pathogens, can be recolonized with favorable bacteria, which in turn has therapeutic effects.
Microbiota-accessible carbohydrates (MACs) are carbohydrates that are resistant to digestion by a host's metabolism, and are made available for gut microbes, as prebiotics, to ferment or metabolize into beneficial compounds, such as short chain fatty acids. The term, ‘‘microbiota-accessible carbohydrate’’ contributes to a conceptual framework for investigating and discussing the amount of metabolic activity that a specific food or carbohydrate can contribute to a host's microbiota.
A microbiome is the community of microorganisms that can usually be found living together in any given habitat. It was defined more precisely in 1988 by Whipps et al. as "a characteristic microbial community occupying a reasonably well-defined habitat which has distinct physio-chemical properties. The term thus not only refers to the microorganisms involved but also encompasses their theatre of activity". In 2020, an international panel of experts published the outcome of their discussions on the definition of the microbiome. They proposed a definition of the microbiome based on a revival of the "compact, clear, and comprehensive description of the term" as originally provided by Whipps et al., but supplemented with two explanatory paragraphs. The first explanatory paragraph pronounces the dynamic character of the microbiome, and the second explanatory paragraph clearly separates the term microbiota from the term microbiome.
Metatranscriptomics is the set of techniques used to study gene expression of microbes within natural environments, i.e., the metatranscriptome.
The microbiota are the sum of all symbiotic microorganisms living on or in an organism. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a model organism and known as one of the most investigated organisms worldwide. The microbiota in flies is less complex than that found in humans. It still has an influence on the fitness of the fly, and it affects different life-history characteristics such as lifespan, resistance against pathogens (immunity) and metabolic processes (digestion). Considering the comprehensive toolkit available for research in Drosophila, analysis of its microbiome could enhance our understanding of similar processes in other types of host-microbiota interactions, including those involving humans. Microbiota plays key roles in the intestinal immune and metabolic responses via their fermentation product, acetate.
The salivary microbiome consists of the nonpathogenic, commensal bacteria present in the healthy human salivary glands. It differs from the oral microbiome which is located in the oral cavity. Oral microorganisms tend to adhere to teeth. The oral microbiome possesses its own characteristic microorganisms found there. Resident microbes of the mouth adhere to the teeth and gums. "[T]here may be important interactions between the saliva microbiome and other microbiomes in the human body, in particular, that of the intestinal tract."
The human milk microbiota, also known as human milk probiotics (HMP), refers to the microbiota (community of microorganisms) residing in the human mammary glands and breast milk. Human breast milk has been traditionally assumed to be sterile, but more recently both microbial culture and culture-independent techniques have confirmed that human milk contains diverse communities of bacteria which are distinct from other microbial communities inhabiting the human body.
Bile salt hydrolases (BSH) are microbial enzymes that deconjugate primary bile acids. They catalyze the first step of bile acid metabolism and maintain the bile acid pool for further modification by the microbiota. BSH enzymes play a role in a range of host and microbe functions including host physiology, immunity, and protection from pathogens.
Bifidobacterium adolescentis is an anaerobic species of bacteria found in the gastrointestinal tracts of humans and other primates. It is one of the most abundant and prevalent Bifidobacterium species detected in human populations, especially in adults.