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Abstract

The microbiota plays a central role in many physiological reactions and disruptions can lead to diseases such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). The underlying molecular mechanisms however are still not understood. The main challenge is often the vast number of microorganisms underlying interbacterial interactions as well as their effects on host immunity. Caenorhabditis elegans is potentially useful to study the role of certain microbes in IBD given the combined power of bacterial and nematode genetics. However, knowledge on the effects of bacteria on its immune system is still rudimentary e.g. it is debated whether pathogenic bacteria have a metabolic advantage when colonizing the intestine thereby contributing to perturbation. We therefore want to investigate the immune response of C. elegans after exposure to different bacteria strains. In further experiments we want to use this system to examine various metabolic pathways specific to pathogenic bacteria or pathobionts (commensals with a pathogenic tendency) to evaluate their role in the colonization process. In previous studies our lab identified the ethanolamine utilization cluster as promising candidate pathway that could enable bacteria to use ethanolamine as a non-fermentable carbon source accessible during inflammation.