The Living Gut

Our gut plays host to millions of harmless bacteria that make up our gut microbiome, which plays important roles in our immune and nervous systems, and our metabolism. In order to analyse this relationship further, researchers visualised six different Bacteroides bacterial species in the mouse gut by genetically engineering them to each produce a unique fluorescent protein. The team could then pinpoint where in the gut each type of bacteria was located (pictured) and control the activity of specific bacterial genes. These types of tools are an important starting point in addressing questions about the relationship between the microbiome and us, and could possibly advance research into how normal gut bacteria can be used for therapeutic benefits.

Written by Katie Panteli

Katie Panteli

Writer

Katie, a Warwick Biomed graduate, works for a science-publishing house in London with some of the world's most respected scientific minds. She's most interested in human biology, anything and everything that makes us tick.

• Image from work by Weston R. Whitaker, Elizabeth Stanley Shepherd and Justin L. Sonnenburg
• Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
• Image copyright Elsevier 2017
• Published in Cell, April 2017