Gut bacteria thrive on the food we eat. In turn, they provide essential nutrients that keep us healthy, repel pathogens and even help guide our immune responses.
Gut bacteria thrive on the food we eat. In turn, they provide essential nutrients that keep us healthy, repel pathogens and even help guide our immune responses.
Understanding how and why some bacterial strains we ingest can successfully take up residence in the large intestine, while others are quickly evicted, could help scientists learn how to manipulate the makeup of thousands of bacterial species there in ways that enhance our health or help fend off disease. But the sheer complexity of gut ecology has hampered this task.
Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine working with laboratory mice have shown that it’s possible to favor the engraftment of one bacterial strain over others by manipulating the mice’s diet. The researchers also have shown it’s possible to control how much a bacterium grows in the intestine by calibrating the amount of a specific carbohydrate in each mouse’s water or food.
Read more at Stanford University
