The gut microbiome is a critical mediator in the interaction between an individual and their nutritional environment. As such, it has great potential as a target for the prevention and treatment of diet-related metabolic diseases.

This talk reports recent large-scale, multi-omic studies of the gut microbiome in type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. In doing so, it addresses the role of microbially-mediated inflammation in the onset and development of both diseases. It also highlights the challenges inherent in microbiome studies, where causality may be attributed at the level of a single species, a clade, or a complex community.