ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Optimal integration between host physiology and functions of the gut microbiome.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Consistent, Scale-Dependent Differences in the Biogeography of Host-Associated and Free-Living Microbiomes Across Systems.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Phylogenetic influence on gut microbiome diversity within an African herbivore community.BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- The microbiota elicits compensatory adaptation in a seasonally-adapting animal host.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Clinical profiling of skin microbiome and metabolome during re-epithelialization.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Quantitative Synthesis of Microbe-Driven Acclimation and Adaptation in Wild Vertebrates.Evolutionary applications · 2024Review
- Anti-diarrheal drug loperamide induces dysbiosis in zebrafish microbiota via bacterial inhibition.Microbiome · 2023Article
- Convergent remodelling of the gut microbiome is associated with host energetic condition over long-distance migration.Functional ecology · 2023Article
- Diet- and salinity-induced modifications of the gut microbiota are associated with differential physiological responses to ranavirus infection inPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The faecal metabolome of black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra) varies in response to seasonal dietary changes.Molecular ecology · 2022Article
- Oral antibiotics reduce voluntary exercise behavior in athletic mice.Behavioural processes · 2022Article
- Disentangling host-microbiota complexity through hologenomics.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2022Review
- Experimental manipulation of microbiota reduces host thermal tolerance and fitness under heat stress in a vertebrate ectotherm.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- Antimicrobial peptide human β-defensin-2 improvesFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2022Article
- Antimicrobial peptides and the gut microbiome in inflammatory bowel disease.World journal of gastroenterology · 2021Article
- Is Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis a Predictor of Increased Susceptibility to Poor Outcome of COVID-19 Patients? An Update.Microorganisms · 2020Review
- The role of the microbiome in host evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Host-associated microbial communities have profound impacts on animal physiological function, especially nutrition and metabolism. The hypothesis of 'symmorphosis', which posits that the physiological systems of animals are regulated precisely to meet, but not exceed, their imposed functional demands, has been used to understand the integration of physiological systems across levels of biological organization. Although this idea has been criticized, it is recognized as having important heuristic value, even as a null hypothesis, and may, therefore, be a useful tool in understanding how hosts evolve in response to the function of their microbiota. Here, through a hologenomic lens, we discuss how the idea of symmorphosis may be applied to host-microbe interactions. Specifically, we consider scenarios in which host physiology may have evolved to collaborate with the microbiota to perform important functions, and, on the other hand, situations in which services have been completely outsourced to the microbiota, resulting in relaxed selection on host pathways. Following this theoretical discussion, we finally suggest strategies by which these currently speculative ideas may be explicitly tested to further our understanding of host evolution in response to their associated microbial communities. This article is part of the theme issue 'The role of the microbiome in host evolution'.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.