Symbiotic microbes induce profound genetic changes in t...( MADISON Though bacteria are everywh...)
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MADISON Though bacteria are everywhere from the air we breathe and the food we eat to our guts and skin the vast majority are innocuous or even beneficial, and only a handful pose any threat to us. What distinguishes a welcome microbial guest from an unwanted intruder?
Research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests the answer lies not with the bacteria, but with the host.
A study appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences may help reveal what sets a platonic relationship apart from a pathogenic one. In the paper, researchers from the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and the University of Iowa identify a slew of microbe-induced genetic changes in a tiny squid, including a set of evolutionarily conserved genes that may hold the secrets to developing a mutually beneficial relationship.
"Interactions of animals with their microbiota have a profound impact on their gene expression, and to create a stable association with a microorganism requires a lot of conversation between the microbe and the host," says UW-Madison medical microbiologist Margaret McFall-Ngai, senior author of the new study.
Many studies have focused on the bacterial side of that conversation. But aside from a few "professional pathogens," like the bubonic plague-causing Yersinia pestis, most bacteria are not inherently good or bad, McFall-Ngai says. Instead, bacterial effects are highly context-dependent: She reported in 2004 that a common bacterial "toxin" which causes tissue damage under some circumstances also plays a critical role in host tissue development.
She now suggests that the outcome may rely on how the host itself responds to the bacterium. Problems most often arise when a normal balance is disrupted, she says. "A lot of these pathogens are just at the wrong place at the wrong time."
To listen into the animal-microbe conversation, McFall-Ngai takes adv
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| Contact: Margaret McFall-Ngai mjmcfallngai@wisc.edu 608-262-2393 University of Wisconsin-Madison Source:Eurekalert |
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