EMBL scientists show how to grow a wide range of gut bacteria in the lab
Scientific recipes to successfully grow and study gut bacteria in the lab: that’s what EMBL scientists are publishing in
Nature Microbiology on March 19. They report on the nutritional preferences and growth characteristics of 96 diverse gut bacterial strains. Their results will help scientists worldwide advance our understanding of the gut microbiome.
The bacteria living in the gut have a big impact on our health. But researchers still don’t know what kind of food most of our gut bacteria like to live on, or precisely how they metabolise nutrients. The current paper reports on the growth characteristics of the main human gut bacteria in nineteen different growth media with well-defined recipes.
Peer Bork,
Kiran Patil and
Nassos Typas, all group leaders at EMBL Heidelberg, led the work.
“Our resource provides scientists with tools to experimentally investigate the gut microbiome ecology, going beyond correlations and identifying causes and effects,” says Nassos Typas.
