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Microbial metabolism

nicX-ing bad habits with your microbial friends

The human gut microbiome metabolizes hundreds of drugs, but the clinical relevance of these biotransformations remains unclear. Chen and colleagues show that gut bacterial nicotine metabolism protects against liver disease.

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Fig. 1: A transkingdom model for bacterial nicotine metabolism and host liver disease.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01DK114034; R01HL122593; T32HL007185).

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Correspondence to Peter J. Turnbaugh.

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P.J.T. is on the scientific advisory board for Pendulum, Seed and SNIPRbiome; there is no direct overlap between the current study and these consulting duties. V.U. has no relevant declarations.

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Upadhyay, V., Turnbaugh, P.J. nicX-ing bad habits with your microbial friends. Nat Metab 4, 1442–1443 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-022-00684-9

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