Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Germs gone wild

Nature Medicine volume 18, pages 654–656 (2012)Cite this article

Subjects

The normally harmless behavior of bacteria in the intestinal tract is maintained by community structure and the integrity of host defenses. When either or both of these are compromised, a few disgruntled outcasts can cause a riot, taking down the whole neighborhood (pages 799–806).

Trillions of bacteria colonize the lower intestinal tract in mammalian species. The composition, diversity and stability of the intestinal microbial ecosystems have recently become a subject of intense investigation and a rich source of surprising findings. One notion that quickly emerged from these studies is that loss of microbial diversity in colonized tissues tends to be associated with deleterious effects on the host1. Oral administration of antibiotics has one of the most powerful impacts on microbial composition and diversity and has long been known to disrupt the intestinal homeostasis, predisposing the host to infections with antibiotic-resistant pathogens2. In this issue of Nature Medicine, Ayers et al.3 provide a detailed account of the lethal consequences of antibiotic-induced disturbance of the intestinal microbiota and the detrimental role of the innate immune system in decreasing tolerance in this setting.

This is a preview of subscription content

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Epithelial integrity and microbial composition affect intestinal homeostasis and the innate immune response.

References

  1. Macpherson, A.J. & Harris, N.L. Nat. Rev. Immunol. 4, 478–485 (2004).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Beaugerie, L. & Petit, J.C. Best Pract. Res. Clin. Gastroenterol. 18, 337–352 (2004).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Ayres, J.S., Trinidad, N.J. & Vance, R.E. Nat. Med. 18, 799–806 (2012).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bäckhed, F., Ley, R.E., Sonnenburg, J.L., Peterson, D.A. & Gordon, J.I. Science 307, 1915–1920 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Rakoff-Nahoum, S., Paglino, J., Eslami-Varzaneh, F., Edberg, S. & Medzhitov, R. Cell 118, 229–241 (2004).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Martinon, F., Burns, K. & Tschopp, J. Mol. Cell 10, 417–426 (2002).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Kofoed, E.M. & Vance, R.E. Nature 477, 592–595 (2011).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Miao, E.A. et al. Nat. Immunol. 7, 569–575 (2006).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Sun, Y.H., Rolan, H.G. & Tsolis, R.M. J. Biol. Chem. 282, 33897–33901 (2007).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Cohen, J. Nature 420, 885–891 (2002).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Lee, Y.K. & Mazmanian, S.K. Science 330, 1768–1773 (2010).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Garrett, W.S., Gordon, J.I. & Glimcher, L.H. Cell 140, 859–870 (2010).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Atherton, J.C. & Blaser, M.J. J. Clin. Invest. 119, 2475–2487 (2009).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Wu, H.J. et al. Immunity 32, 815–827 (2010).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Elinav, E. et al. Cell 145, 745–757 (2011).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Namiko Hoshi and Ruslan Medzhitov are at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Yale University Medical School, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.,

    Namiko Hoshi & Ruslan Medzhitov

Authors
  1. Namiko Hoshi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ruslan Medzhitov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ruslan Medzhitov.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Hoshi, N., Medzhitov, R. Germs gone wild. Nat Med 18, 654–656 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2767

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2767

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing