Gut Barrier Function and Bacterial Interactions of Companion, Laboratory and Production Animals

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to bring together current literature and stimulate scientific knowledge exchange, within the community of researchers working to elucidate the complex relationships between gut barrier function and the intestinal microbiome in health and disease.

The gut represents the most important internal interface with microbial populations of the outside world. While maximizing the surface area to absorb critical components from the diet essential for life, the gut immune system must also tolerate symbiotic micro-organisms necessary for digestion and fermentation but prevent invasion of pathogenic microbes across the single-cell thick epithelial gut barrier.

Maintenance of gut barrier function is critical to preventing serious systemic illness including septicemic/endotoxic shock. However, little is known about what dictates the delicate balance of epithelial cell dynamics and microbial populations in health and disease. Laboratory animals have acted as models of human gut barrier dysfunction and dysbiosis, but it is of critical importance to consider interspecies differences and the concept of comparative pathology of the gut encompassing humans, companion, laboratory, and production animals; which may provide new insights into the microbiome and gut barrier function.

We hope that this Special Issue will bring together specialist literature to stimulate further scientific understanding and collaboration between scientists engaged in all aspects of this field of research.

Dr. Jonathan Williams
Dr. Carrie Duckworth
Guest Editors

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