Gut Bacteria That “Talk” to Human Cells May Lead to New Treatments

We have a symbiotic relationship with the trillions of bacteria that live in our bodies—they help us and we help them. It turns out that they may even speak the same language as we do. And new research from The Rockefeller University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai suggests these newly discovered commonalities may open the door to “engineered” gut flora that can have therapeutically beneficial effects on disease. “We call it mimicry,” says Dr. Sean Brady, Director of Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Genetically Encoded Small Molecules, where the research was conducted. The breakthrough is described in a paper published online on August 30, 2017 in Nature. The article is titled “Commensal bacteria Make GPCR Ligands That Mimic Human Signalling Molecules.” In a double-barreled discovery, Dr. Brady and co-investigator Dr. Louis Cohen found that gut bacteria and human cells, though different in many ways, speak what is basically the same chemical language, based on molecules called ligands. Building on that, they developed a method to genetically engineer the bacteria to produce molecules that have the potential to treat certain disorders by altering human metabolism. In a test of their system on mice, the introduction of modified gut bacteria led to reduced blood glucose levels and other metabolic changes in the animals.