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!

From “synthetic” to defined microbial communities for clearer terminology

Stéphane Chaillou participated in a joint reflection with a group of international researchers, coordinated by the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), on the terminology used to describe certain microbial communities. The collective of experts proposes replacing the term “synthetic community” (or SynCom), sometimes perceived negatively, with “Defined Microbial Community”.

Harnessing gut microbiome diversity for next-generation fermented foods

On June 5, 2026, Julien Tap participated in the INRAE-Tokyo NODAI Joint Symposium on Fermentation and Food Bioscience. This online event brought together researchers from INRAE and the Tokyo University of Agriculture to discuss fermentation microbiology, food bioscience, taste, and microbiome-based approaches to health. More than 100 participants attended the symposium, most of them Japanese students, highlighting the strong interest of the next generation in fermentation and microbiome science.

DOMINO 3rd annual meeting in Madrid

After three years, the #DominoEU project has reached full speed, with significant results across all project objectives. The three-day meeting provided an opportunity to review the very busy year of 2025 and the many key findings that can be leveraged in the coming months.