Fig. 1.

Overall summary of PXR and the gut-liver axis within the context of exposures and outcomes. Briefly, PXR activity can be modulated under basal, physiologic, pathophysiological, pharmacological, and toxicological conditions by a variety of environmental factors. These factors include drugs, environmental chemicals, dietary constituents, microbial metabolites, etc. Modifying factors such as sex, age, exposure time windows, and species specificity may interact the PXR signaling within the gut liver axis. Although the well-known outcomes of PXR activation with are drug-drug interactions through transcriptional regulation of various host genes involved in xenobiotic biotransformation, studies in the literature have also discovered bona fide PXR-targeted intestinal bacteria that are suppressed by PXR as well as the importance of PXR in modulating inflammation and intermediary metabolism.