Not exact matches
The team found that the
microbes lurking on the forearm, palm, index finger, back of the knee and sole of the foot were often more diverse than those in the
gut, «traditionally considered to be very diverse», says David Relman, who researches human microbial ecology
at Stanford University in California but was not involved in the research.
Microbes at home in your
gut may also be influencing your brain.
Dr. Sergio Lira and his team
at the Icahn School of Medicine
at Mount Sinai, New York, asked if
gut microbes have a hand in tumor development.
In another animal microbiome experiment, Jeffrey Gordon, a biologist
at Washington University in St. Louis, took a suite of
microbes from the
guts of both obese and lean mice and transplanted them into the
guts of
microbe - free mice.
«Because we observed microbial effects mainly in the
gut, we believe that a
microbe - based therapy would avoid the collateral damage seen with drugs that wipe out classes of immune cells across the body,» said Benoist, a professor of microbiology and immunobiology
at HMS.
By contrast, the HMS team homed in on one
microbe at a time and its effects on nearly all immune cells and intestinal genes, an approach that offers a more precise understanding of the interplay between individual
gut microbes and their hosts.
The ratios of different
microbes in the
gut also differed between lean and obese participants
at every stage of the study, the researchers said.
By chemically removing the
gut microbiome in zebrafish in the lab and then repopulating the
gut with two to three bacterial species, University of Oregon biologist Karen Guillemin has shown that certain
microbes are especially skilled
at suppressing the host immune system and preventing inflammation — a discovery she thinks may have implications for human health.
Early results show that the capsules have cured 32 people infected with drug - resistant Clostridium difficile, a dangerous
microbe that installs itself in the
gut and causes inflammation marked by diarrhea, cramping and pain.Thomas Louie, an infectious disease physician
at the University of Calgary in Alberta, presented the data on October 3
at ID Week, a meeting of infectious disease specialists.
Twenty years ago, people would have laughed
at the suggestion that
gut microbes could influence brain function, says immunologist Sven Pettersson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Diverse
gut microbes are also thought to keep pathogens
at bay simply by occupying a range of habitable niches inside us, leaving no room for anything else to grow.
In a recent paper in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Shapira, who studies the
gut microbes of the nematode C. elegans, reviews evidence that demonstrates how microbiotas affect and contribute to host evolution, either by evolving along with the host, or by stepping in
at critical moments to help the host adapt to a new environmental challenge.
Their communication system is mediated,
at least in part, by the presence of certain
gut microbes.
By the time the babies were a year old, though, the researchers couldn't detect any distinct differences between the
gut microbes of 22 babies
at high risk of asthma and 297 babies
at low risk.
A new study in mice, conducted by researchers
at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet together with colleagues in Singapore and the United States, shows that our natural
gut - residing
microbes can influence the integrity of the blood - brain barrier, which protects the brain from harmful substances in the blood.
The work also highlights a connection between
gut microbes and brain function that scientists are only just beginning to understand, says Ted Dinan of the Microbiome Institute
at the University College Cork, Ireland.
The
gut microbiome is the population of
microbes living within the human intestine, consisting of tens of trillions of microorganisms (including
at least 1,000 different species of known bacteria).
A nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) changed the composition and diversity of
gut microbes, which in turn shaped how the drug is broken down and ultimately, cut its effectiveness, according to an animal study from the Perelman School of Medicine
at the University of Pennsylvania.
«We found that when you perturb
gut microbes early in life among mice and then stop the antibiotics, the
microbes normalize but the effects on host metabolism are permanent,» says senior author Martin Blaser, MD, the Muriel G. and George W. Singer Professor of Translational Medicine, director of the NYU Human Microbiome Program, and professor of microbiology
at NYU School of Medicine.
«Our stomachs produce gastric acid to kill ingested
microbes, and taking a medication to suppress gastric acid secretion can change the composition of the
gut microbiome,» said senior author Bernd Schnabl, MD, associate professor of gastroenterology
at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
But recent work my laboratory
at Cornell University conducted with researchers
at King's College London compared nearly 500 twin pairs, a sample size sufficient to show a marked genetic effect on the relative abundance of a specific set of
gut microbes.
Finally, the researchers looked
at the impact of adding succinate — a salt that oxygen - loving bacteria in the
gut produce as a byproduct — into the drinking water of germ - free mice with 4 - day
microbes that had received extra Clostridia.
In the second study, Thomas Gajewski
at the University of Chicago and colleagues noticed differences in how quickly tumours grew in two groups of mice with different sets of
gut microbes.
In the largest study to date examining the DNA of termite
gut microbes, researchers
at the Evolutionary Genomics Unit
at OIST, in collaboration with colleagues
at the University of Sydney, have an answer that unites both sides of the debate — vboth.
The explosion of microbiome science has also fuelled a gold rush among companies and individuals offering dietary advice, self - help books aimed
at targeting our
gut microbes, and probiotics, which are foods or supplements that contain live bacteria and yeasts.
Scheiman, who once played Division 1 basketball
at New York's St. John's College, believes that feeding the right mix of
microbes to our
guts could offer a new approach to enhancing athletic performance.
Embriette Hyde, project manager
at the American
Gut Project, points out that it can be very challenging to isolate the roles of individual
microbes within the «complex tangle» of microbiomes.
A high resolution image of the bacteria, Entercoccus faecalis, a
microbe that lives in the human
gut, is available in color
at www.genome.gov/dmd/img.cfm?node=Photos/Microorganisms&id=79092, or in black and white
at www.genome.gov/dmd/img.cfm?node=Photos/Microorganisms&id=79093.
At PNNL, she leads research into the microbiome, a term for the collective communities of
microbes that reside in many environmental niches, including the human
gut and soil.
The
gut microbiome — a collection of bacteria and other
microbes in the
gut — could be a highly accurate predictor of hospitalizations for patients with cirrhosis, according to a recently published study led by a researcher
at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Now, researchers
at the University of Chicago have found evidence that
gut microbes drive gender bias in autoimmune diseases, through interactions with sex hormones.
Using cutting edge DNA sequencing technology, the research team found that the
microbe communities living in the
guts of mice have a pretty regular routine: different types of bacteria hang out in various areas of the intestines in the morning, moving around during the day, and ending up in a completely different place
at night.
Working
at its Neuroscience Institute, she studies
gut microbes.
For example,
microbes in the
gut that excel
at breaking down the new food might multiply.
Studying twins from birth through age 2, scientists
at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that the
gut's immune system develops in sync with the
gut's tens of trillions of
microbes.
Three researchers
at the forefront of research on the microbiome - brain connection recently spoke with The Kavli Foundation about how
microbes communicate with the brain and whether we can modify the
gut microbiome to treat disorders of the brain and mind.
However, a long, hard look
at the methods through which animals are intensively reared for food production has led Dr. A-V to start to consider how modern interventions in animal husbandry might damage the
gut microbes, and hence the health, of farm animals.
To understand this
gut - brain connection further, let's look
at some of the main pathways through which
microbes in the
gut impact the nervous system.
Specifically, babies whose mothers ate a high - fat diet had fewer Bacteroides
microbes in their
guts, both
at birth and several weeks after.
That's why we need a healthy barrier to keep the trillions of
microbes in our
guts at a safe distance.
But as we practice good eating habits to fertilize a healthy
gut microbiota, let's not forget that
gut microbes, beneficial or not, are foreigners to our body's immune system and will elicit inflammation and disease if they aren't kept
at a safe distance.
If you are trying your hand
at home fermentation of milk in order to improve your digestive health and rebalance the
gut environment with beneficial
microbes dominating instead of pathogenic strains, kefir is going to be the more potent choice for you and your family.
In the first study to examine the effects of dark chocolate on various types of stomach bacteria, researchers
at Louisiana State University recently discovered that the healthy, «good»
microbes in the
gut — such as bifidobacterium and lactic acid — feast on dark chocolate, producing anti-inflammatory compounds as a result.
Hence, the microflora in your
gut could play a key role in obesity, as it appears that the
microbes flourishing in an overweight body are much more efficient
at extracting calories from food.
So we know even in a cross species this occurs, but
at the end of the day, it's still about what you eat because I can give you billions of
microbes from somebody really lean unless you're eating the right diet to nourish
microbes, they're not gonna recolonize, they're not gonna repopulate your
gut, and they're not gonna have a lasting effect on your microbiome.
In fact, exactly how the
gut microbiome «interacts with foods to produce health conditions» is considered a new and dynamic area for further research by individuals on all sides of the red meat - colon cancer debate.10 For example, researchers
at Harvard Medical School are studying fecal samples to assess the impact of red meat intake on
gut microbes and their byproducts, which the researchers speculate may influence «biological pathways associated with colorectal cancer and other digestive diseases.»
Each individual's community of
gut microbes is unique and profoundly sensitive to environmental conditions, beginning
at birth.
While it is relatively easy to meet the body's requirements for niacin via diet alone, many people remain
at least mildly deficient due to an imbalanced
gut environment which impairs absorption from food and limits synthesis of B3 via beneficial
gut microbes (1).
A bit of a paradox in all of this is the increased likelihood that a low carb microbial community will most certainly lead to increased
gut permeability — a well - known phenomenon whereby microbial parts (lipopolysaccharides, which leads to metabolic endotoxemia) and whole
microbes themselves (bacteremia) leak from the intestinal track into the blood, leading to low - grade inflammation that is
at the root of metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity and heart disease.
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