Breaking bad: Do high-fat diets trigger ubiquitous bacteria to become bad?

我们吃什么就是什么。我们摄入的食物塑造了我们的肠道菌群，而肠道菌群又在健康和疾病中起着关键作用。嗜杆菌是人类肠道微生物群中的一员，是亚硫酸盐还原细菌（SRB）的一员，其释放有毒分子硫化氢（H2S）作为副产物。H2S与结肠疾病和肠道炎症有关。高脂肪饮食正变得越来越普遍。以肉类为基础的高脂肪饮食富含特定的氨基酸，在动物研究中，它们被证明可以促进嗜杆菌的生长。然而，它们对人类的影响尚未确定。有趣的是，我们最近在培养和多样性分析方面的工作表明，Bilophila是人类肠道微生物群的一种常见成员。这就提出了以下问题：它们对我们有害吗？我们能否制定特定的饮食或其他干预策略来控制它们的数量？这个多学科项目旨在通过体外结肠模型、组织培养、宏基因组学和代谢组学来了解肠道微生物组中嗜杆菌的动态变化及其与饮食和肠道健康的关系。

We are what we eat. The food we consume shapes our gut microbiota, which in turn plays a key role in health and disease. Bilophila is a resident of the human gut microbiome and is a member of sulphite-reducing bacteria (SRB) that release the toxic molecule hydrogen sulphide (H2S) as a byproduct. H2S has been linked to colonic disorders and gut inflammation. High-fat diets are becoming more prevalent. Meat based high-fat diets are enriched with specific amino acids and in animal studies they are shown to promote the growth of Bilophila. However, their impact in humans is not yet established. Intriguingly, our recent work on cultivation and diversity analyses revealed that Bilophila is a common member of the human gut microbiome. This raises the following questions: are they detrimental to us? Can we develop specific diets or other intervention strategies to control their population? This multidisciplinary project aims to understand the dynamics of Bilophila in the gut microbiome and its relationship to diet and gut health using in vitro colon models, tissue culture, metagenomics, and metabolomics.