This episode: Mouse gut microbes, from mice or from human donors, can protect mice against arsenic toxicity!

Download Episode (6.3 MB, 6.9 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Streptomyces griseus

News item

Takeaways
Our gut microbes benefit us in many ways, including nutritionally—by producing vitamins and helping to digest food—and by helping us in defense against pathogens and other immunological threats.

Many things we do can affect our gut microbes too, positively or negatively. What we eat, toxins we encounter, and other aspects of lifestyle can damage our microbial communities.

In this study, we see that the reverse could be true, that gut microbes, and specifically one called Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, can protect their host against toxins such as arsenic.

Journal Paper:
Coryell M, McAlpine M, Pinkham NV, McDermott TR, Walk ST. 2018. The gut microbiome is required for full protection against acute arsenic toxicity in mouse models. Nat Commun 9:5424.

Other interesting stories:

• Using bacteria to remediate rust on iron (paper)
• New large viruses discovered infecting bacteria in human gut
• Cool podcast about gardening that often mentions microbes

Email questions or comments to bacteriofiles at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening!

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, RSS, Google Play. Support the show at Patreon, or check out the show at Twitter or Facebook