Grant: Joint Canada-Israel Health Research Program

The human intestine routinely encounters many threatening bacteria that cause many cases of disease and death in humans worldwide. These bacteria utilize strategies to infect and interfere with the normal function of cells, known as virulence mechanisms, which lead to disease. Recent studies have shown that these virulence mechanisms can be affected by signals coming from the very large community of microbes that inhabits the gut (gut microbiome). Preliminary data from our team has shown that a small compound produced by non-harmful bacterial strain from the gut microbiome can reduce the virulence of Salmonella. The goal of our research is to expand from these findings in order to (i) determine how these and other similar compounds alter virulence mechanisms of harmful bacteria, (ii) to determine how the intestinal cells and immune cells respond to these compounds, and (iii) to identify gut microbiome species that are able to limit these bacterial infections through the production of these compounds. Results from this research will not only expand our knowledge on how bacterial metabolites affect infectious agents, but it also has great potential to identify small compounds and bacterial species that will reduce infectious disease . Our team encompasses the interdisciplinary background and expertise necessary to address these questions across academic research groups from Canada, Israel and Brazil.