Word: guts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fact that the human gut flora flourished in the rodents was indeed an experimental coup. Since the mice were genetically engineered to be germ-free, lacking a functioning immune system, the scientists could be certain that any bug colonies that took hold in the mouse guts originated entirely from the human sample, not the mice. Being able to recreate the living human gut environment so faithfully in an animal was a welcome prize. (Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From...
...analyze all the genes contained in those bacteria. That meant researchers could determine not only which species of bacteria were present and in what proportions, but also which genes these bugs were actively using in different conditions. Before such genomic-analysis technology became available, researchers could study only the gut microbes (animal or human) that could be cultured outside their intestinal home - something that not all of the oxygen-shunning bugs were amenable to - but never the complete microbiota of the gut. "We cannot recapitulate the entire microbial diversity that exists in these complex communities. We simply don't know...
That diversity and its impact came into plain view when the researchers started experimenting with the rodents' diet. When one group of mice was fed a typical Western diet, high in fat and sugars, they tended to gain weight and grow more Firmicutes gut bacteria and fewer Bacteroidetes. In mice given a low-fat plant-based chow, the distribution of the two groups of bugs flipped and the animals remained lean. It's not clear whether the balance of gut bugs causes weight gain or is a result of it, but the findings suggest that a "gut profile" could potentially...
Gordon also found in his mouse populations that changing the animals' diet caused a dramatic and rapid shift in the population of bacteria in their gut. Switching a mouse from low-fat plant chow to a high-fat Western diet resulted in an explosion of Firmicutes in less than...
That suggests that factors like gut microbes, which scientists traditionally would not think exerted influence on genes, may have a surprisingly powerful effect, changing how a body's genes would normally control the way the body digests food and breaks it down into energy. It makes sense, when you consider that the great majority of the cells and genes in the typical human body belong to the microbiota. "There is a vast reservoir of attributes associated with our human physiology that is derived from our gut microbial communities," he says. "Our genetic landscape is actually an amalgam...