The health of the microbial community is associated with COVID-19 severity, but it’s not yet clear if the relationship is causal.

Depleting intestinal fungi allows radiation to effectively fight cancer, likely because the microbes influence the antitumor immune response.

Work in rodents shows that the bacteria living in a mother’s gut can produce immunomodulatory metabolites and influence the production of maternal antibodies—both of which can affect her offspring’s development.

Bacteria in the gut influence the production of antibodies and themselves secrete metabolites. In a pregnant woman, these compounds may influence immune development of her fetus.

The microbiota helps align a mouse’s innate immune system with its feeding patterns, prepping the animal to fend off infection when it’s most likely to be eating.

Bacteria that live in the digestive tracts of animals may influence the adaptive trajectories of their hosts.

Swabbing infants born by Cesarean-section with a gauze harboring their mother’s vaginal fluids made their skin and gut microbiota more closely resemble that of vaginally born babies.

The biologist at the University of Sunshine Coast in Australia wants to understand why some animal species adapt well to urbanization, while others fall flat.

A review offers a glimpse of previously unconsidered variables that could hinder efforts to identify true correlations between disease and gut microbiome composition.

Tiny doses of maternal poo mixed with breast milk and given to Cesarean-born infants makes their gut microbiota resemble those of babies born vaginally.

A B-cell receptor critical for the production of a subset of intestinal antibodies has been pinpointed, but the function of those antibodies remains unclear.

The gut microbiome is more malleable in the first two years after birth, allowing probiotics to make their mark. Can we exploit this to improve infants’ health?

The microbial makeup of a newborn baby’s intestines has changed dramatically over the past 100 years, and we are now beginning to understand how and why this matters.

Most of the viruses present in people’s guts are bacteriophages, but how they interact with resident bacteria is still an open question.

Researchers find strains of the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae that produce high levels of alcohol in 60 percent of patients with the condition.

Research on hundreds of babies finds the delivery method is linked with a greater abundance of taxa more frequently seen in hospitals.

Physical activity, independent of diet, shifts the composition of bacteria in the intestines, spurring researchers to search for species that might provide benefits akin to working out.

An experiment delves into how the microbiome shapes immunity.

Molecules produced by resident bacteria and their hosts may signal immune cells to attack the body’s own tissues.