Topic
Microbial metabolism in the intestine, including the shift from fiber to protein fermentation and its health consequences.
Imperial's Petter Brodin reports respiratory infections in 23% of babies on supplemented formula and 40% on plain formula. Nestlé funded the trial. Outside immunologist Daniel Davis cautions that a stronger immune response might raise allergy risk.
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Hosei University researchers report that E. coli detects glucose-6-phosphate released by Bifidobacterium through its Uhp sensor. They suggest the signal works only if the two species live within 40 micrometres of each other.
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Researchers searching more than 600,000 microbiomes found DNA related to the giant bacterium Epulopiscium in thousands of human gut samples. The evidence is sequence data only, and Nicola Segata of the University of Trento says the source may be another, unknown bacterium.
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Researchers who tracked more than 170 people around a COVID shot found that those who ran a fever had more gut inflammation, in a study in Science. The human link is correlational, and the team has only begun testing whether the bacteria behind the fever can be reduced.
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Stanford-led researchers find the Hadza and Tsimane share over 1,200 gut bacterial species, about 60% of them rare or absent in industrial guts. For many species, strain split dates match migrations out of Africa and into the Americas, so the missing microbes look like companions handed down over millennia.
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Pentadecanoic acid, made by Bacteroides gut bacteria, cut arterial plaque in mice by about 50% by inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase, the enzyme statins target. The matching human evidence is so far only a correlation.
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Helmholtz Center researchers and collaborators built a 21-species gut community and found plant fiber boosted Segatella copri only when Enterobacteriaceae such as E. coli were also present. The result complicates diet-only accounts of why industrialized and nonindustrialized gut microbiomes differ.
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UCLA researchers scanning nearly 1,500 adults tied older-looking brains to specific gut bacteria in the one group that also gave stool samples. That makes the gut a lead for follow-up studies, though an association cannot show that changing gut bacteria would slow brain aging.
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John Cryan's lab at University College Cork found only the decaf half of 31 coffee drinkers improved on two memory tests. Cryan suspects gut microbes, but the blinded trial ties them to the result without showing they caused it.
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UW-Madison researchers linked higher blood levels of the gut-made compound ImP to faster cognitive decline in nearly 1,200 people. Evidence that ImP causes harm so far comes from mice, so lowering it to slow dementia is still an idea for the future.
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Petter Brodin's team found 39% of infants with a strong first-week immune 'seeding' reaction had eczema or food allergy by age 1, against 12% of the rest. The data, from nearly 600 Swedish babies, tie the risk to gut bacteria and feeding, and would put any prevention window within days of birth if the link proves causal.
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Memorial Sloan Kettering researchers found each extra 100g of sugary food on antibiotics went with an average 24% bigger gut-diversity drop in 158 patients. Mouse experiments point to sugar feeding a pathogen bloom, though the patient result is an association drawn from hospital meal logs.
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Mayo Clinic researchers tie colorectal and breast cancers diagnosed at 50 or younger to distinct gut microbes, using stool from 1,364 patients. The signals give researchers named bacteria to test next, though the data cannot yet say whether those microbes drive early disease or follow from it.
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University College Cork researchers report that 31 habitual coffee drinkers scored lower on stress and depression once coffee returned, decaf or not. Gut microbe and metabolite differences make a gut-brain route plausible, though arms of about 15 people keep it an association.
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University of Copenhagen researchers found blood signs of gut bacteria fermenting more protein in 52 ISS astronauts within weeks of reaching orbit. The team suspects slower digestion and says Mars crews may need countermeasures, though blood chemistry alone cannot confirm the cause.
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Penn State found age reshaped the resistance genes of 320 broiler chickens far more than antibiotic, probiotic or essential-oil feed did. With the antibiotic diet also flat, the three-week trial cannot show the alternatives reduce resistance.
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Researchers in Japan engineered gut E. coli to make or withhold putrescine, and the producing strains raised male fly lifespan to 13.8 days from 11.0. The design isolates a microbial metabolite as a cause, though the effect broke down in females.
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Gut phage therapy usually fails because you cannot get enough phage to enough bacteria in time. A team writing in Nature Microbiology built a resident E. coli that makes the phage on site, and it protected mice against an oral Salmonella challenge.
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Kyushu University fed shoreline isopods nothing but polystyrene board for a week and found the effect in their gut transcriptomes rather than in their survival, which puts real weight on the choice of control group.
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Rather than wait for experimental libraries to fill, the Cornell and BTI tool indexes a chemical space roughly a thousand times wider. What a query returns is a candidate structure rather than a confirmed one.
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