by Nathalie Juge, The Conversation Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Having a sweet tooth isn’t just a human characteristic. It turns out our gut microbes can have a preference for sweets, too—and one of these selfish, sugar-loving bacteria is Ruminococcus gnavus. Ruminococcus gnavus (R gnavus for short) is one of the many bacterial species normally found...
A newly discovered genetic arrangement may help a common bacterium in the human gut protect itself from a widely used antibiotic. Original story from The Marine Biological Laboratory Credit: Don Stalons/ CDC Antibiotic resistance is a significant and growing medical problem worldwide. Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and collaborators have found a novel...
by Christopher Damman, The Conversation GLP-1 serves many functions in the body. Credit: Lthoms11/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SAWegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro are weight loss and diabetes drugs that have made quite a splash in health news. They target regulatory pathways involved in both obesity and diabetes and are widely considered breakthroughs for weight loss and blood sugar...
by Columbia University Irving Medical Center Graphical abstract. Credit: Immunity (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.immuni.2023.11.003The microbiome has a profound influence on our health, but exactly how our resident bacteria wield their power is still unclear. A type of T cell appears to provide some answers for gastrointestinal health, a study of the mouse microbiome finds. The study, appearing...
by Jim Oldfield, University of Toronto Graphical abstract. Credit: Cell Reports Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2023.101051Researchers at the University of Toronto and its partner hospitals are finding that changes in gut microbiota after bariatric surgery can directly improve metabolism, independent of food intake, weight loss and other metabolic factors. Their ongoing work—including a study published in the...
by Dennis Thompson You may think that artificial sweeteners can help you lose some weight, but a new study finds they are no good for your gut’s microbiome. People who use aspartame (Equal), sucralose (Splenda), saccharin (Sweet’N Low), or stevia leaf extract tended to have intestinal bacteria colonies that differed significantly from those of people...
A common skin bacterium called Staphylococcus aureus can cause itchiness by acting directly on the nerve cells. DEPOSIT PHOTOSSHARE The itchiness that comes with some annoying dermatological conditions might be caused by certain microbes on skin. In a study published November 22 in the journal Cell, a team of scientists found that a common skin...
by Falko Schoklitsch, Graz University of Technology Overview of the bioinformatic workflow for the recovery of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from fruits and vegetables and the detection of their presence in the gut. Credit: Gut Microbes (2023). DOI: 10.1080/19490976.2023.2258565Bacterial diversity in the gut plays an important role in human health. The crucial question, however, is where are...
by Susan Reslewic Keatley, Simons Foundation Comparison of microbial differentials obtained from age matching and sex matching and cytokine analysis. Credit: Nature Neuroscience (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01361-0. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01361-0 The biological roots of autism continue to perplex researchers, despite a growing body of studies looking at an increasing array of genetic, cellular and microbial data. Recently, scientists have homed in on...
by Technical University of Denmark An overview of the SNIPR001 creation process. First, WT phages are screened against a panel of E. coli strains. Then, phages with broad activity against E. coli are tail fiber engineered and/or armed with CRISPR–Cas systems containing sequences specific to E. coli, creating CAPs. These CAPs are then tested for host...
