MABEL

Metabolomics Approach for the assessment of Baby-Mother Enteric microbiota Legacy

Coordinator: University of Bologna

Scientific officer:Gianfranco Picone

Duration: 20/12/2022 - 19/12/2025 

Research group: Gianfranco Picone, Francesco Capozzi, Luca Laghi, Elena Babini, Enrrico Luchinat and Carlo Mengucci

Gut microbiota represents the microbe healthy population living in our intestine, playing key roles in several metabolic, nutritional, physiological, and immunological processes. After birth, is known that the composition of infant gut microbiota derives from both horizontal (method of delivery and environmental conditions) and vertical transmission from mother to child, which is strictly related to how the infant is fed (breastfed or infant formula). The possibility that a preliminary microbiota could form during pregnancy, although the womb is considered a sterile environment, has been recently becoming the subject of studies. Detailed information on the development of the micro-biota during pregnancy is lacking, and its acquisition represents a fundamental step in the know-ledge of how perinatal and neonatal factors modulate the development of the microbiota in infants. Thus, the focus of the MABEL project is to investigate the notion of vertical transmission of micro-biota by applying a combination of multi-omis methodologies, such as High-Resolution Nuclear Ma-gnetic Resonance (NMR), Genomic Sequences, and Gas Chromatography (GC). To maximize the bio-logical information coming from stool, and infant meconium extracts, advanced data mining, and machine learnings process will be employed on the multi-omics dataset. This experimentation is fundamental as the bacterial ecosystem in early life plays a role in microbial composition and di-sease susceptibility throughout life such as obesity or allergic sensitization.