@article{75577f78d99b45e6be4ac163eb1344e2,
title = "Intestinal microbiota: From sequencing to function",
author = "Frick, \{Julia Stefanie\} and Dirk Haller",
note = "Funding Information: This special issue of the International Journal of Medical Microbiology highlights selected aspects of the Priority Program 1656 entitled “Intestinal microbiota – a microbial ecosystem at the edge between immune homeostasis and inflammation” ( www.intestinal-microbiota.de ). The Priority Program is a highly competitive grant of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and provides funding for a national consortium of 27 researchers. We invited for this special issue a variety of reviews that address important questions to the role of commensal and infectious bacteria in the context of acute and chronic inflammation. This included expert opinions to the structural basis for lipopolysaccharide (LPS) signaling, the functional characteristics of dysbiotic microbial ecosystems, the sensing mechanisms of the innate immune system as well as the clinical relevance of fecal microbiota transplantation. We also highlight tools in microbiota research such as metabolome analysis and specific aspects of laboratory mice. Most importantly, we included primary research of two consortial projects within the Priority Program 1656. The first project by Gessner and colleagues addressed the variability of 16S ribosomal DNA-sequencing in a multicenter quality assessment ( Hiergeist et al., 2016 ). The second study by Baines and colleagues identified factors that contribute to the variation of microbiota composition in mice across German animal facilities ( Rausch et al., 2016 ). These selected highlights clearly reflect the main goal of the Priority Program 1656 namely to generate knowledge and reliable tools for a functional understanding of the intestinal microbiota in health and disease, reaching far beyond the descriptive acquisition of large scale sequencing datasets.",
year = "2016",
month = aug,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1016/j.ijmm.2016.02.007",
language = "English",
volume = "306",
pages = "255--256",
journal = "International Journal of Medical Microbiology",
issn = "1438-4221",
publisher = "Elsevier GmbH",
number = "5",
}
