A rising star : A comprehensive approach to Akkermansia muciniphila ecosystems, interactions and applications

Abstract

General introduction and thesis outlineAkkermansia muciniphila is a fascinating intestinal symbiont, which has received considerable attention over the last two decades due to its mechanisms of action to improve host health. In this thesis, A. muciniphila plays a main role in all the chapters. A. muciniphila Muc T was isolated in 2004 at the laboratory of Microbiology at Wageningen University (Derrien et al. 2004). It is a Gram-negative bacterium belonging to the Verrucomicrobiota (formerly Verrucomicrobia) phylum. In the human gut, A. muciniphila is currently the only representative of this phylum and present in high numbers with an abundance ranging from 0.5-5% (Cani and de Vos 2017). The name A. muciniphila was derived from Dr. Antoon Akkermans, who was leading the Microbial Ecology group within the Laboratory of Microbiology at the time of isolation, shortly before his retirement. The isolation was performed on the fecal sample of a healthy individual using purified mucin as the sole source of carbon, nitrogen, and energy (Derrien et al. 2004, Belzer and de Vos 2012. The genome of A. muciniphila Muc T is composed of one circular chromosome of 2.7 Mbp coding for 2,176 protein-coding genes and is in terms of function mainly dedicated to mucus degradation (van Passel et al. 2011). Here an introduction is provided into the role of A. muciniphila in host health and other functions of this bacterium. In addition, we will introduce different models that may be used to study its performance. A. muciniphila involvement in human healthExtensive studies have been performed on the correlation between the gut microbiota and health and disease (de Vos et al. 2022). The gut microbiota composition was found to be strongly correlated to several diseases, including pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, obesity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and liver cirrhosis (