The “pantryome” concept was proposed by Dr. Jeremy Burton, chair in human microbiome and probiotics at the Lawson Health Research Institute, University of Western Ontario. It is based on the idea of community sharing of nutritional metabolites produced by the microbiome. In other words, individual bacteria that lack some nutrients can access what they need from this shared pool of metabolites and can, in return, give excess metabolites back to the pool for other microorganisms to use.
This concept has important implications when thinking about health, wellness and disease as we need to think about the microbial community as a whole and not just an individual bacterium.
Speaking at the IPA World Congress + Probiota in Copenhagen recently, Dr. Burton said: “There’s no daylight between microbes and the host, and if we accept that, we have to accept they share everything. And that goes all the way through to sharing components to generate energy. We’ve got to stop thinking of microbes doing this independently, host cells doing this independently. There’s a shared resource pool between both of these types that actually exist in the microbiome.”
Dr. Burton added that the science has progressed on trying to define a healthy microbiota or a dysbiosis microbiota, “but it’s surprising that we still don’t have a very good handle on it, and so I don’t think we’ve gone quite far enough in looking at that relationship.
“So, the pantryome is really all the things in between that they share, and we don’t always recognize, and some of them are probably quite ubiquitous and may not be evident or hiding in plain sight. So, things like ATP electron acceptors, things that carry bioenergetically important things around.”
Much of Dr. Burton’s presentation in Copenhagen focused on the colon, which he said is often underrated and dismissed by many as just a waste stream. He noted that that is “sort of ironic because [the colon is] where all the microbes live”.
Postbiotics, prebiotics and more
Referencing several presentations at the IPA World Congress + Probiota about postbiotics, Dr. Burton said that a lot of those small molecules are actually absorbed in the small intestine, and they don’t reach the colon. However, by using delivery technology, you could deliver those postbiotics to the colon and contribute to the pantryome.
“Another example is that some of the prebiotics require relatively large amounts, which aren’t always consumer friendly, but maybe if we add a couple of really key molecules to that, get them down into the colon, we can reduce the amount of prebiotic that we have, make it a little bit more specific,” he said.
“There are so many potentials to supplement the existing technology. This isn’t a technology that is competitive. I think this is a complimentary technology, and I can see a lot of growth in this.”
Watch the video for the full interview.