Watch Your Gut

Like loving gardeners fending off invasive weeds, some bacteria protect and nourish your gut while blocking out harmful bacteria that would burst in and wreak havoc. The relationship between these microbes is fundamental to gut health, so researchers are developing new platforms to observe and study this delicate balance. A team has recently established a miniature 3D recreation of conditions in the human gut (pictured). If bacteria can colonise the cells in this replica as they do in the gut then it would create an ideal stage to watch the interactions unfold. The researchers found that mechanical forces prompted the gut cells to secrete mucin, a mucus (red) that is both the first line of defence against, and an attachment point for, bacteria. They found that E. coli (green) colonised this layer, showing that the model can host bacteria, so the stage is set for investigation to begin.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Jeeyeon Lee, Nishanth Menon and Chwee Teck Lim
• Institute for Health Innovation and Technology (iHealthtech), National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Advanced Materials, February 2024