Uncovering the history of intestinal host–microbiome interactions through vertebrate comparative genomics
The genome of each organism encodes the information necessary for its development and physiology, and also provides a record of its natural history including its symbioses. A major challenge in symbiosis research is defining the signals exchanged between microbes and their hosts and understanding how those signals are perceived and interpreted. Using the animal intestine as an example, this chapter describes how genome science has revealed evidence of how the host perceives and responds to microbial signals by uncovering information stored in host coding sequences, transcriptional activity, and the function of genomic regulatory regions. Comparative genomic analyses of host–microbe interactions in related host species is presented as a way to gain insight into the evolution of those host genomic regions that mediate symbiotic signaling and to discern conserved symbiotic signaling mechanisms.
