Researchers Find Ways To Promote The Growth Of Good Bacteria In Human Gut

The findings could help spur the development of new probiotic therapies for gut health.

Researchers at Yale University have discovered a novel mechanism to promote the growth of beneficial bacterial species known as "good" bacteria in the human gut. This may enable medical interventions that promote gut and overall human health.

The findings were published in the journal Science. According to researchers, when exposed to carbon limitation, one of the most abundant beneficial species found in the human gut can increase its colonisation potential, a finding that could lead to novel clinical interventions to support a healthy gut.

The Yale team, based in the lab of geneticist Eduardo Groisman, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis, found that the beneficial gut bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron responded to starvation for carbon -- a main building block for all cells -- by sequestering a portion of the molecules for an essential transcription factor within a membrane-less compartment, news agency ANI reported.

The team established that sequestration of the transcription factor increased its activity, which modified the expression of hundreds of bacterial genes, including several that promote gut colonization and control central metabolic pathways in the bacterium. These findings reveal that "good" bacteria use the sequestration of molecules into membrane-less compartments as a vital strategy to colonize the mammalian gut.