Enhancing nutritional niche and host defenses by modifying the gut microbiome
Name
Molecular Systems Biology - 2022 - Sun - Enhancing nutritional niche and host defenses by modifying the gut microbiome.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.53 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
ccc63057d39a4b967f0d08ddd3d969ac
Author(s)
Sun, Qing
Vega, Nic M
Cervantes, Bernardo
Mancuso, Christopher P
Mao, Ning
Taylor, Megan N
Collins, James J
Khalil, Ahmad S
Gore, Jeff
Lu, Timothy K
Date Issued
November 2022
Journal
Molecular Systems Biology
Publisher
EMBO
Citation
Sun, Qing, Vega, Nic M, Cervantes, Bernardo, Mancuso, Christopher P, Mao, Ning et al. 2022. "Enhancing nutritional niche and host defenses by modifying the gut microbiome." Molecular Systems Biology, 18 (11).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The gut microbiome is essential for processing complex food compounds and synthesizing nutrients that the host cannot digest or produce, respectively. New model systems are needed to study how the metabolic capacity provided by the gut microbiome impacts the nutritional status of the host, and to explore possibilities for altering host metabolic capacity via the microbiome. Here, we colonized the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans gut with cellulolytic bacteria that enabled C. elegans to utilize cellulose, an otherwise indigestible substrate, as a carbon source. Cellulolytic bacteria as a community component in the worm gut can also support additional bacterial species with specialized roles, which we demonstrate by using Lactobacillus plantarum to protect C. elegans against Salmonella enterica infection. This work shows that engineered microbiome communities can be used to endow host organisms with novel functions, such as the ability to utilize alternate nutrient sources or to better fight pathogenic bacteria.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.15252/msb.20209933
