Unlocking therapeutic impacts of the gut microbiota with computational tools

The human gut microbiota, particularly the intestinal microbiota, shapes host physiology, disease risk, and therapeutic outcomes through complex metabolic and enzymatic activities. Recent advances in molecular omics, metabolomics, enzyme bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence (AI) have created unprecedented opportunities to elucidate its therapeutic roles to further enable precision microbiome medicine for personalized prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. In this review, we highlight emerging applications that leverage molecular omics and metabolomics technologies to dissect gut microbial functions, along with developments in enzyme bioinformatics and AI tools that reveal gut microbial species, enzymes, and metabolic pathways impacting human health. Finally, we discuss perspectives on data standardization, functional annotation, and interpretability, and how emerging tools are accelerating translational microbiome research.