Fat or Thin Determined by Colon Microorganisms

Research conducted by Jeffrey Gordon, director of the Center for Genome Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, and and his graduate student Buck Samuel, found a colon bacterium Methanobrevibacter smithii (decomposing waste into methane for daily fatulence in our body) collaborate with another bacerium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicronchop (digesting the carbohydrates) to increase calorie intake from food.

The researchers colonized one group of these mice with the polysaccharide-digesting bacterium B. thetaiotaomicron. Another group was colonized with M. smithii, while a third group received both B. thetaiotaomicron and M. smithii.

Mice from a control group were colonized with the sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio piger, which is the most abundant species in healthy adults.

All the mice then received the same amount of food – a standard rodent chow rich in plant polysaccharides. Mice colonized with both B. thetaiotaomicron and M. smithii had significantly more fat than animals colonized with either microbe alone or with the other bacteria.

As noted in the paper, the findings may help understand how to manipulate the representation of M. smithii and/or other microbes in human gut and eventually lead to a novel means for preventing obesity in the overfed or increasing caloric harvest in the underfed.

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Tags: colon microorganism obesity science bacterium gut bacteria calorie food health research