The French Gut at EMBL Human Microbiome Symposium 2025

Published: Sep 18, 2025 by FME Lab

The relationship between diet and the gut microbiome lies at the heart of both health and sustainability challenges. Understanding how dietary habits shape microbial diversity is key to developing new strategies for precision nutrition.

At the EMBL Human Microbiome Symposium, Julien had the pleasure of presenting preliminary results of the French Gut project, carried out at INRAE MetaGenoPolis in collaboration with AP-HP. This presentation sparked lively discussions, with many participants acknowledging the scale of the challenge: deploying such a project across the entire French territory.

The French Gut relies on an exceptional infrastructure, built thanks to the dedication of the entire MetaGenoPolis team. Their work made it possible to collect thousands of standardized dietary questionnaires, transform them into nutritional profiles, and link them with metagenomic data derived from stool samples. Their commitment to building this unique infrastructure is the backbone of the French Gut project. Bravo to the whole team!

A seed meeting between INRAE Micalis Institute and Imperial College London

Last week on October 3rd, scientists from Imperial College London (ICL) and from INRAE Micalis Institute were hosted by the French embassy in London for a seed meeting around synthetic biology and synthetic microbial ecology as scientific strategies for biotechnology and food production. A special thanks to the organizer: Ludovic Drouin (French Embassy), Young-Kyoung Park (Micalis) and Rodriguo Ledesma-Amaro (ICL). Our several groups with complementary research discussed about perspectives of future collaborations on the field together with Ferment du Futur or Bezos Centre.

School of Artificial Intelligence Applied to Microbiomes

Earlier this month, Julien had the pleasure of participating as a lecturer at the School of Artificial Intelligence Applied to Microbiomes, hosted at AgroParisTech and organized by Aristeidis Litos, Daniel Garza, and Ariane Bize. The event brought together an exceptional group of researchers and students exploring how AI, data science, and mathematical modeling are reshaping our understanding of microbial ecosystems.

Consumers at the core of fermented food innovation

Yesterday on September 23rd, about 100 participants from academia, industry, NGOs and policy makers across Europe had joined the second Stakeholder Forum of Horizon Europe #DominoEU project. Four speakers Pr. Jutta Roosen from the Technical Universty of Munich, Dr. Emmanuella Magriplis associate professor from the Agricultural University of Athens, Dr. Michail Syrpas associate professor at Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania and Dr. Nikoletta Vidra Science Manager at Yakult Europe altogether spotlighted the central role of consumer research in advancing the field of fermented foods.