Longevity & AgingGut Microbiota Rewrites Your Epigenome to Drive or Prevent Intestinal Disease
This comprehensive 2025 review in Gut Microbes examines how gut microbiota drive intestinal disease through epigenetic reprogramming. The authors detail how microbial metabolites and dysbiosis alter DNA methylation, histone modifications, non-coding RNAs, and m6A RNA methylation to activate inflammatory pathways and cancer-promoting genes linked to IBD and colorectal cancer. Environmental triggers including diet, smoking, alcohol, and air pollution compound these microbial epigenetic effects. The review also evaluates emerging therapeutic strategies—probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation, dietary modification, and phage therapy—that may reverse pathological epigenetic patterns. The authors conclude that targeting microbiome-epigenome interactions represents a promising frontier for personalized intestinal disease treatment.
