The microbiome is a collection of trillions of bacteria that reside in and on our bodies.
The microbiome is a collection of trillions of bacteria that reside in and on our bodies. Each person’s microbiome is unique — just like a fingerprint — and researchers are finding more and more ways in which it impacts our health and daily lives. One example involves an apparent link between the brain and the bacteria in the gut. This brain-gut “axis” is believed to influence conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, depression, and irritable bowel syndrome. However, many studies into the brain-gut axis have stalled because of one central problem: the lack of an adequate testable model of the gut.
Current testing platforms cannot emulate the human gut accurately and cheaply enough for large-scale studies. The research community needs something new, which is what a team at MIT Lincoln Laboratory is tackling in a project funded through the Technology Office. Researchers there aim to create the perfect artificial gut.
“The question from the mechanical side is, how do you emulate the colon?” says Todd Thorsen, the project’s principal investigator from the Biological and Chemical Technologies Group. “Bacteria in the colon occupy lots of ecological niches.”
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Photo: An integrated artificial gut platform developed at Lincoln Laboratory allows researchers to accurately emulate the colon, opening the way to precise testing of the human microbiome. CREDIT: Glen Cooper
