Gut Microbiota Research & Practice is a section dedicated to promoting knowledge-sharing and debate among researchers, scientists and healthcare professionals. You will find a selection of discussions about articles from scientific literature as well as other content including interviews with experts, event reports, and special publications.
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.
How might microorganisms move from one part of the body to another? Let's begin with the womb, where the concept of fetal colonization has rapidly gained acceptance, indicated by meconium and placental microbe studies.
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.
by Kristina Campbell
United European Gastroenterology (UEG) week starts today and runs until October 28th in Barcelona, Spain. UEG is a non-profit organization focused on advancing gastroenterology care, comprising 22,000 professional members from several European societies.
In recent years, there is growing interest in alternative treatments for both inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome.
by Fernando Aspiroz
"The human microbiota is a fundamental component of what it means to be human," says David Relman in a recent JAMA opinion piece. In this article, Relman gives a picture of the importance of the human microbiota in health and a brief history of how scientists have measured it.
Mimee and co-workers, from the M.I.T Synthetic Biology Center, published in the new journal Cell Systems a novel set of genetic technologies for the manipulation of the mammalian commensal bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron.
In a new journal, Cell Systems, Mimee et al. report that in their M.I.T. lab they succeeded in modulating the constitutive gene expression of the mammalian commensal bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron.
In this study, researchers characterized the gut microbiota of breastfeeding mothers after collecting fecal samples from 2 days to 6 months postpartum. They found that the women's gut bacterial communities were similar to those found in other adults; the gut
