Research group
The André Mateus lab is interested in understanding how proteins function and interact in the species of the human gut microbiome.
The gut microbiome plays fundamental roles to maintain human health. Multiple diseases are now associated with imbalances in gut microbiome composition, but their mechanisms are still not clear. We focus on mapping and modulating protein function and interactions in these species. For this, we use systems biology approaches by perturbing cells (using drugs or genetic manipulation) and measuring the outcome on the state of the proteome. This allows us to not only link functionally related proteins, but also to understand how drugs act and what are their mechanisms of resistance. Further, we are interested in the metabolism of these organisms, for example, which proteins are important to metabolize certain nutrients.
By integrating this knowledge, we hope that we will be able to understand how the species of the microbiome interact between themselves and how stable communities are formed. In the future, this should open the door to establish strategies to manipulate gut microbiome composition towards a healthy state.