Can we use bacteriocins to improve gut health?

许多细菌产生抗菌化合物，以帮助它们在混合群落中竞争。来自食品和乳制品菌株的称为细菌素的抗菌肽已经成功地被开发出来，以防止食物中毒或乳房炎。产生这些细菌素的基因簇越来越多地在肠道细菌或胃肠道元基因组中被发现。众所周知，肠道微生物群在我们的健康和疾病中发挥着关键作用，并与肥胖、糖尿病、结肠癌和通过肠道-脑轴发展认知障碍有关。我们想要确定细菌素是否有潜力调节复杂的人类肠道微生物组，并提供一种新的方法来塑造微生物组，以实现健康的结果。该项目将在细菌素发现、体外结肠模型发酵和肠道微生物组和代谢组分析的过去和当前项目的基础上，研究细菌素在肠道条件下的表达以及对健康人和胃肠道疾病患者微生物区系组成和功能的影响。

Many bacteria produce antimicrobial compounds to help them compete in mixed communities. Antimicrobial peptides called bacteriocins from food and dairy strains have already been exploited successfully to prevent food poisoning or mastitis. Gene clusters producing these bacteriocins are increasingly being discovered in gut bacteria or gastrointestinal metagenomes. The gut microbiome is known to play a critical role in our health and disease and has been associated with obesity, diabetes, colon cancers and the development of cognitive disorders via the gut-brain-axis. We want to determine whether bacteriocins have the potential to modulate the complex human gut microbiome and provide a novel approach to shape microbiomes towards a healthy outcome. This project will build on past and current projects on bacteriocin discovery, in vitro colon model fermentations and gut microbiome and metabolome analysis to investigate bacteriocin expression in gut conditions and the effect on the composition and function of the microbiota of both healthy and patients with gastrointestinal disorders.