by Andreu Prados
A recent study, led by Dr. Fredrik Bäckhed from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, found that seasonal microbiota variation may modulate energy metabolism of the hibernating brown bear.
With the advent of DNA sequencing and other genome-enabled technologies for studying microbial communities, countries around the world have identified microbiome research as a way to address some of their pressing problems, from food production to human health. The US government is pursuing this research in earnest, as laid out in a new report in Nature Microbiology.
Gut Microbiota for Health is pleased to bring you its "Year at a Glance 2015" document, which covers the important developments in gut microbiota science in 2015!
What was the hottest topic in gut microbiota science this year? Many experts would say it was the study of interactions between gut microbiota and the immune system.
Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) for patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) has shown mixed clinical results (see recent trials here and here). In a new pilot study, published as open access, Faming Zhang and colleagues tested the safety and efficacy of a "step-up" FMT strategy in 15 steroid-dependent UC patients.
Authors of a new Cell paper gave groups of germ-free mice fecal microbiota samples from six healthy adults representing five different habitual diets: American (both a standard diet and a 'primal' diet), Bangladeshi, Malawian, and Amerindian.
Researchers know the fecal microbiota of infants is a treasure trove of information -- it can reveal details about delivery mode and diet -- but microbiota-based predictions about future health are only beginning to emerge. A team of researchers led
by Paul Enck
Microbes in the gut produce a huge range of metabolites, which affect various processes in the host. Knowledge about the metabolome is limited by current experimental and computational tools, but even now, interconnections are emerging between the microbiome, the metabolome, and immunological reponses -- for instance, the possible role of metabolites in immune system pattern recognition.
A recent study of humans with celiac disease who were treated with helminths raised the possibility that an increase in microbial species richness (i.e. the number of different species present) could regulate gluten-induced inflammation in the gut.
by Paul Enck
In this recent Immunity paper, researchers wanted to know whether host immune response can mediate pathogen colonization resistance through regulation of the gut microbiota.
