JOSEPH PICKARD, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGOEven when their systemically infected hosts stopped eating, beneficial gut bacteria still received enough food to survive, according to a mouse study published in Nature this week (October 1). Researchers from the University of Chicago and their colleagues identified an immune pathway through which intestinal cells provide commensal microbes with the sugar fucose.
“The host is responding to a systemic microbial infection signal by altering glycans on intestinal epithelial cells, and this in turn increases host fitness in a microbiota-dependent manner,” Laurie Comstock, a microbiologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was not involved in the work, told The Scientist.
FLICKR, KEVIN DOOLEYTesting nearly 600 samples, a team led by investigators at Colorado State University has found that the soil beneath New York City’s Central Park is exceptionally diverse. Their work was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week (October 1).
“Interestingly they found that belowground diversity from urban and managed soils have similar diversity to some of known natural ecosystems, which indicate the high resilience of belowground diversity to anthropogenic pressures,” microbial ecologist Brajesh Singh of the University of Western Sydney in Australia who was not involved in the work ...
