Researchers report that dietary sugars can silence a protein necessary for a beneficial bacterium to colonize the mouse gut. As understanding of the role of the gut microbiota in human health expands, researchers have found that diet influences gut micorbiomes by providing nutrients to particular species assemblages. Among the species associated with lean and healthy individuals is Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron. Eduardo A. Groisman and colleagues investigated the effect of a high-fructose diet on B. thetaiotaomicron populations, given that fructose, as well as the monosaccharide glucose, is abundant in the Western diet. The authors found that the bacteria require a protein called Roc for gut colonization, and that both fructose and glucose decreased the abundance of Roc within 1 hour in bacterial cultures. The authors engineered a strain of B. thetaiotaomicron resistant to Roc silencing by glucose and fructose, and demonstrated that the strain outcompeted the wild-type strain in mice fed a diet high in glucose and sucrose, a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose. According to the authors, the results suggest that diet can regulate bacterial colonization in the gut.
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Article #18-13780: "Dietary sugar silences a colonization factor in a mammalian gut symbiont," by Guy Townsend et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Eduardo A. Groisman, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; tel: 203-737-7940; e-mail: eduardo.groisman@yale.edu
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences