Editor's Summary
29 May 2008
A gut issue: Bacterial symbiosis shapes a healthy immune response
Microbiologists are beginning to understand how and why mammals are colonized by multitudes of symbiotic bacteria. But what differentiates 'good' from benign or harmful bacteria remains largely unknown. The intestinal microbe Bacteroides fragilis was shown in 2005 to have profound effect on the mammalian immune system, an effect ascribed to a single molecule, capsular polysaccharide A (PSA). Now B. fragilis PSA is shown to protect animals against both bacterial and chemical colitis in a process involving interleukin-10-producing T cells. This suggests that B. fragilis helps maintain human health by suppressing the intestinal inflammatory response, and that symbiosis factors may provide a route to new therapies.
Editorials: Who are we?
Efforts to catalogue and understand the human microbiome are opening up a whole new research frontier. But the earlier Human Genome Project should provide a cautionary lesson about overselling.
doi:10.1038/453563a
News Feature: Microbiology: The inside story
The human body teems with microbes. In this, the first of two features, Asher Mullard looks at the global efforts to catalogue this vast 'microbiome'. In the second, Apoorva Mandavilli meets the surgeons who have a rare opportunity to watch an ecosystem being established as they transplant guts from one person to another.
Asher Mullard
doi:10.1038/453578a
News Feature: Microbiology: Straight from the gut
The human body teems with microbes. In the first of two features, Asher Mullard looks at the global efforts to catalogue this vast 'microbiome'. In this, the second, Apoorva Mandavilli meets the surgeons who have a rare opportunity to watch an ecosystem being established as they transplant guts from one person to another.
Apoorva Mandavilli
doi:10.1038/453581a
News and Views: Immunology: Soothing intestinal sugars
The gut is a new frontier in microbiology, offering many opportunities for innovative investigation. The finding of one such study is that intestinal inflammation in mice can be tamed by bacterial sugars.
Marika C. Kullberg
doi:10.1038/453602a
Article: A microbial symbiosis factor prevents intestinal inflammatory disease
Sarkis K. Mazmanian, June L. Round & Dennis L. Kasper
doi:10.1038/nature07008
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (857K) | Supplementary information
