Thomas Gurry

University of Geneva | UNIGE · Geneva-Lausanne School of Pharmacy (EPGL)

Emerging evidence suggests that low-grade systemic inflammation plays a key role in altering brain activity, behaviour and affect. Modulation of the gut microbiota using prebiotic fibre offers a potential therapeutic tool to regulate inflammation, mediated via the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA). However, the impact of prebiotic consum...

Microbially derived short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in the human gut are tightly coupled to host metabolism, immune regulation and integrity of the intestinal epithelium. However, the production of SCFAs can vary widely between individuals consuming the same diet, with lower levels often associated with disease. A systems-scale mechanistic understa...

Prebiotic fibre represents a promising and efficacious treatment to manage pre-diabetes, acting via complementary pathways involving the gut microbiome and viscosity-related properties. In this study, we evaluated the effect of using a diverse prebiotic fibre supplement on glycaemic, lipid, and inflammatory biomarkers in patients with pre-diabetes....

Emerging evidence suggests that low-grade systemic inflammation plays a key role in altering brain activity, behaviour, and affect. Modulation of the gut microbiota using prebiotic fibre offers a potential therapeutic tool to regulate inflammation, mediated via the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). However, the impact of prebiotic cons...

Prebiotic fibre represents a promising and efficacious treatment to manage pre-diabetes, acting via complementary pathways involving the gut microbiome and viscosity-related properties. In this study, we evaluated the effect of using a diverse prebiotic fibre supplement on glycaemic, lipid, and inflammatory biomarkers in patients with pre-diabetes....

Microbially-derived short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in the human gut are tightly coupled to host metabolism, immune regulation, and integrity of the intestinal epithelium. However, the production of SCFAs can vary widely between individuals consuming the same diet, with lower levels often associated with disease. A mechanistic understanding of this...

Humans often show variable responses to dietary, prebiotic, and probiotic interventions. Emerging evidence indicates that the gut microbiota is a key determinant for this population heterogeneity. Here, we provide an overview of some of the major computational and experimental tools being applied to critical questions of microbiota-mediated persona...

The human gut microbiota is known for its highly heterogeneous composition across different individuals. However, relatively little is known about functional differences in its ability to ferment complex polysaccharides. Through ex vivo measurements from healthy human donors, we show that individuals vary markedly in their microbial metabolic pheno...

Background Sequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene is the most used technique for the identification of Alzheimer’s specific differences in the relative abundance of specific organisms. Several bioinformatic pipelines have been developed so far to characterize complex gut microbial communities. This study aims at evaluating the effect of bioinf...

Prebiotic fermentation in the gut often leads to the coproduction of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and gases. While excess gas production can be a potential problem for those with functional gut disorders, gas production is rarely considered during prebiotic design. In this study, we combined the use of theoretical models and an ex vivo experimen...

One of the crucial roles played in the context of human physiology by the human gut microbiota is to ferment resistant polysaccharides and dietary fibres in the colon. Even though it has long been presumed that these processes play fundamental roles in regulating human health, we remain unable to treat or even diagnose deficiencies in microbial fer...

Amplicon high-throughput sequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene is currently the most widely used technique to investigate complex gut microbial communities. Microbial identification might be influenced by several factors, including the choice of bioinformatic pipelines, making comparisons across studies difficult. Here, we compared four commo...

Prebiotics confer benefits to human health often by promoting the growth of gut bacteria that produce metabolites valuable to the human body, such as short chain fatty acids (SCFAs). While prebiotic selection has strongly focused on maximizing the production of SCFAs, less attention has been paid to gases, a byproduct of SCFA production that also h...

The human gut microbiota is known for its highly heterogeneous composition across different individuals. However, relatively little is known about functional differences in its ability to ferment complex polysaccharides. Through ex vivo measurements from healthy human donors, we show that individuals vary markedly in their microbial metabolic pheno...

The human microbiome, described as an accessory organ because of the crucial functions it provides, is composed of species that are uniquely found in humans1,2. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the impact of routine interpersonal contacts in shaping microbiome composition. In a relatively ‘closed’ cohort of 287 people from the Fiji Islands,...

Engineering functional amyloids through a modular genetic strategy represents new opportunities for creating multifunctional molecular materials with tailored structures and performance. Despite important advances, how fusion modules affect the self-assembly and functional properties of amyloids remains elusive. Here, using Escherichia coli curli a...

The human microbiome, described as an accessory organ because of the crucial functions it provides, is composed of species that are uniquely found in humans. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the impact of routine interpersonal contacts in shaping microbiome composition. In a relatively 'closed' cohort of 287 people from the Fiji Islands, whe...

Changes in the gut microbiota have been associated with two of the most common gastrointestinal diseases, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Here, we performed a case-control analysis using shotgun metagenomic sequencing of stool samples from 1792 individuals with IBD and IBS compared with control individuals in th...

Several gastrointestinal diseases show a sex imbalance, although the underlying (patho)physiological mechanisms behind this are not well understood. The gut microbiome may be involved in this process, forming a complex interaction with host immune system, sex hormones, medication and other environmental factors. Here we performed sex-specific analy...

Dietary interventions to manipulate the human gut microbiome for improved health have received increasing attention. However, their design has been limited by a lack of understanding of the quantitative impact of diet on a host's microbiota. We present a highly controlled diet perturbation experiment in a healthy, human cohort in which individual m...

Endospore-formers in the human microbiota are well adapted for host-to-host transmission, and an emerging consensus points to their role in determining health and disease states in the gut. The human gut, more than any other environment, encourages the maintenance of endospore formation, with recent culture-based work suggesting that over 50% of ge...

Endospore-formers in the human microbiota are well adapted for host-to-host transmission, and an emerging consensus points to their role in determining health and disease states in the gut. The human gut, more than any other environment, encourages the maintenance of endospore formation, with recent culture-based work suggesting that over 50% of ge...

Background Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are two of the most common gastrointestinal disorders. The gut microbiome—the collection of microorganisms in the gut—presumably plays a large role in both diseases. Therefore, the microbiome holds great promise both as a diagnostic tool and as a target for treatment. Ho...

Hundreds of clinical studies have demonstrated associations between the human microbiome and disease, yet fundamental questions remain on how we can generalize this knowledge. Results from individual studies can be inconsistent, and comparing published data is further complicated by a lack of standard processing and analysis methods. Here we introd...

Dietary interventions to manipulate the human gut microbiome for improved health have received increasing attention. However, their design has been limited by a lack of understanding of the quantitative impact of diet on a host’s microbiota. We present a highly controlled diet perturbation experiment in a healthy, human cohort in which individual m...

Background Colonization by the pathogen Clostridium difficile often occurs in the background of a disrupted microbial community. Identifying specific organisms conferring resistance to invasion by C. difficile is desirable because diagnostic and therapeutic strategies based on the human microbiota have the potential to provide more precision to the...

Synbiotics refer to combinations of probiotics and prebiotics that act synergistically to confer health benefits to the host. As a therapeutic strategy, they provide a gentle yet powerful method for modulating the composition and metabolic output of the human gut microbiota. In the context of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, synbioti...

Recurrent hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a leading cause of readmission despite standard of care (SOC) associated with microbial dysbiosis. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) may improve dysbiosis; however, it has not been studied in HE. We aimed to define whether FMT using a rationally derived stool donor is safe in recurrent HE compared to SO...

Hundreds of clinical studies have been published that demonstrate associations between the human microbiome and a variety of diseases. Yet, fundamental questions remain on how we can generalize this knowledge. For example, if diseases are mainly characterized by a small number of pathogenic species, then new targeted antimicrobial therapies may be...

Fecal microbiota transplantation is a highly effective intervention for patients suffering from recurrent Clostridium difficile, a common hospital-acquired infection. Fecal microbiota transplantation's success as a therapy for C. difficile has inspired interest in performing clinical trials that experiment with fecal microbiota transplantation as a...

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is a highly effective intervention for patients suffering from recurrent Clostridium difficile , a common hospital-acquired infection. FMT’s success as a therapy for C. difficile has inspired interest in performing clinical trials that experiment with FMT as a therapy for other conditions like inflammatory bow...

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) play central roles in many biological processes. Consequently, an accurate description of the disordered state is an important step towards a comprehensive understanding of a number of important biological functions. In this work we describe a new web server, Mollack, for the automated construction of unfold...

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are notoriously difficult to study experimentally because they rapidly interconvert between many dissimilar conformations during their biological lifetime, and therefore cannot be described by a single structure. The importance of studying these systems, however, is underscored by the fact that they form tox...

Protein aggregation underlies a number of human diseases. Most notably, it occurs widely in neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. At the molecular level, neurotoxicity is thought to originate from toxic gains of function in multimeric aggregates of proteins that are otherwise predominantly monomeric and disordered, fluc...

We demonstrate a highly sensitive mobile phone based spectrometer that has potential to detect cancerous skin lesions in a rapid, non-invasive manner. Earlier reports of low cost spectrometers utilize the camera of the mobile phone to image the field after moving through a diffraction grating. These approaches are inherently limited by the closed n...

We demonstrate a highly sensitive mobile phone based spectrometer that has potential to detect cancerous skin lesions in a rapid, non-invasive manner. Earlier reports of low cost spectrometers utilize the camera of the mobile phone to image the field after moving through a diffraction grating. These approaches are inherently limited by the closed n...

In a recent article, published in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins, a valuable consensus view regarding the nomenclature for disordered proteins was presented.11. Dunker AK, Babu MM, Barbar E, et al. What's in a name? Why these proteins are intrinsically disordered. Intrinsically Disord Proteins 2013; 1:1-4; http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/idp.24157[Tay...

Proteins are heteropolymers that play important roles in virtually every biological reaction. While many proteins have well-defined three-dimensional structures that are inextricably coupled to their function, intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) do not have a well-defined structure, and it is this lack of structure that facilitates their funct...

Amyloid-β is an intrinsically disordered protein that forms fibrils in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. To explore factors that affect the process of fibril growth we computed the free energy associated with disordered Amyloid-β monomers being added to growing amyloid fibrils using extensive molecular dynamics simulations coupled wi...

Many natural underwater adhesives harness hierarchically assembled amyloid nanostructures to achieve strong and robust interfacial adhesion under dynamic and turbulent environments. Despite recent advances, our understanding of the molecular design, self-assembly and structure-function relationships of these natural amyloid fibres remains limited....

Many natural underwater adhesives harness hierarchically assembled amyloid nanostructures to achieve strong and robust interfacial adhesion under dynamic and turbulent environments. Despite recent advances, our understanding of the molecular design, self-assembly and structure–function relationships of these natural amyloid fibres remains limited....

Alpha-synuclein, a protein that forms ordered aggregates in the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease, is intrinsically disordered in the monomeric state. Several studies, however, suggest that it can form soluble multimers in vivo that have significant secondary structure content. It has been shown that alpha-synuclein can form beta-strand r...

Studies on collagen and collagen-like peptides suggest that triple-helical stability can vary along the amino acid chain. In this regard, it has been shown that lysine residues in the Y position and acidic residues in the X' position of (GPO)(3)GXYGX'Y'(GPO)(3) peptides lead to triple-helical structures with melting temperatures similar to (GPO)(8)...

Ras GTPases are lipid-anchored G proteins, which play a fundamental role in cell signaling processes. Electron micrographs of immunogold-labeled Ras have shown that membrane-bound Ras molecules segregate into nanocluster domains. Several models have been developed in attempts to obtain quantitative descriptions of nanocluster formation, but all hav...