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Researchers alter mouse gut microbiomes by feeding good bacteria their preferred fibers
The research aims to develop ways to identify compounds that can enhance the representation of health-promoting members of the gut microbial community. The goal is to identify sustainable, affordable dietary fiber sources for incorporation into next-generation, more nutritious food products.
"Fiber is understood to be beneficial. But fiber is actually a very complicated mixture of many different components," says senior author Jeffrey Gordon, a microbiologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "Moreover, fibers from different plant sources that are processed in different ways during food manufacturing have different constituents. Unfortunately, we lack detailed knowledge of these differences and their biological significance. We do know that modern Western diets have low levels of fiber; this lack of fiber has been linked to loss of important members of the gut community and deleterious health effects."
[...] "We had suspected there might be competition going on among the different strains and that some would be stronger competitors than others," Patnode says. Proteomics analyses and genetic screens confirmed that there was a hierarchy of fiber consumption among the species present in this model bacterial community.
Gordon explains that "it's important to understand how the presence of a particular organism affects the dining behavior of other organisms -- in this case, with regard to different fibers. If we are going to develop microbiota-directed foods aimed at providing benefits to human health, it's important to find ways to determine which food staples will be the best source of nutrients and how the microbiota will respond."
Michael L. Patnode, et. al. Interspecies Competition Impacts Targeted Manipulation of Human Gut Bacteria by Fiber-Derived Glycans. Cell, 2019; 179 (1): 59 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.08.011
(Score: 3, Informative) by optotronic on Saturday September 21 2019, @02:04AM
I'm not a doctor or a biologist, but it seems likely that in general some bacteria would be broadly beneficial. But with the huge variety of gut bacteria and diets, it seems virtually impossible to predict which bacteria could cause problems. However, most (all) medications cause problems for some subset of users. I expect that bacteria found to be commonly helpful could be encouraged with specific fibers, or even supplemented directly, with the patient told to report problems.
I like to think that computers could be used to analyze one's gut biome and output a prescribed diet or supplements, but my wife reminds me that bacteria mutate easily and that would probably be useless. Still, one can hope.