Medical Discovery News
Science permeates everyday life. Yet the understanding of advances in biomedical science is limited at best. Few people make the connection that biomedical science is medicine and that biomedical scientists are working today for the medicine of tomorrow. Our weekly five-hundred-word newspaper column (http://www.illuminascicom.com/) and two-minute radio show provide insights into a broad range of biomedical science topics. Medical Discovery News is dedicated to explaining discoveries in biomedical research and their promise for the future of medicine. Each release is designed to stimulate listeners to think, question and appreciate how science affects their health as well as that of the rest of the world. We also delve into significant biomedical discoveries and portray how science (or the lack of it) has impacted health throughout history.
Medical Discovery News
The War in Your Gut
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1016 The War In Your Gut
Welcome to Medical Discovery News. I’m Dr Norbert Herzog.
And I’m Dr. David Niesel
Everyday a war is waged inside our guts, between the bacteria and the phage or viruses that want to kill them.
They’re each genetically evolving in a race to outdo the other both on earth and in space. We’ll get to that in a minute.
Bacteria are the most abundant cellular organisms in our nutritionally rich gut, as many as one hundred trillion. That’s a lot of hosts for phages to infect.
The community of phages there is called the phageome, and we’re pretty much ignorant of their role in our gut health. Our guess is there’s even more phage than bacteria there.
Phages were first discovered in the early nineteen hundreds for their potential to treat bacterial infections. But that withered when antibiotics were discovered. Now the work is being revived with the current threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
From studies in the lab both on earth and the international space station, we’re learning about the battle between E.coli and T-seven, its attacking phage.
On the ISS, with microgravity and greater radiation, T-seven was slower to infect E coli, but it mutated to infect bacteria that it normally can’t on earth. E coli also acquired new mutations that may have enhanced its ability to combat phage attacks.
We hope to use this knowledge to develop phages to treat antibiotic resistant bacterial infections. Maybe it can also teach us how gut health is impacted by space travel. Both are attempts to improve our lives now and well into the future in a life beyond Earth.
We are Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog, at UTMB and Quinnipiac University, where biomedical discoveries shape the future of medicine. For much more and our disclaimer go to medicaldiscoverynews.com or listen to our podcast on your favorite podcast service.
