Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Glowacki, Robert W P
• Martens, Eric C
• Margolin, William

Titel

If you eat it, or secrete it, they will grow: the expanding list of nutrients utilized by human gut bacteria

Ist Teil von

• Journal of bacteriology, 2021-04, Vol.203 (9)

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Society for Microbiology

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In order to persist, successful bacterial inhabitants of the human gut need to adapt to changing nutrient conditions, which are influenced by host diet and a variety of other factors. For members of the Bacteroidetes and several other phyla, this has resulted in diversification of a variety of enzyme-based systems that equip them to sense and utilize carbohydrate-based nutrients from host, diet, and bacterial origin. In this review, we focus first on human gut and describe recent findings regarding polysaccharide utilization loci (PULs) and the mechanisms of the multi-protein systems they encode, including their regulation and the expanding diversity of substrates that they target. Next, we highlight previously understudied substrates such as monosaccharides, nucleosides, and Maillard reaction products that can also affect the gut microbiota by feeding symbionts that possess specific systems for their metabolism. Since some pathogens preferentially utilize these nutrients, they may represent nutrient niches competed for by commensals and pathogens. Finally, we address recent work to describe nutrient acquisition mechanisms in other important gut species such as those belonging to the Gram-positive anaerobic phyla and , as well as the Because gut bacteria contribute to many aspects of health and disease, we showcase advances in the field of synthetic biology, which seeks to engineer novel, diet-controlled nutrient utilization pathways within gut symbionts to create rationally designed live therapeutics.