Towards Lasting Engineering of the Gut Microbiome

The gut microbiome is important in long-term health. At a guess, its influence on health may be on a par with, say, the state of physical fitness exhibited by an individual. The relative sizes of microbial populations change over a lifetime, and in detrimental ways. Inflammatory microbes and those producing harmful metabolites increase in number, while useful metabolite production declines. This occurs for a range of reasons, easy enough to list, but hard to put in an order of relative importance. For example, the intestinal mucosal barrier declines in effectiveness; the immune system becomes less capable of suppressing problematic microbial populations; diet tends to change with age; and so forth. At present the only definitively lasting way to beneficially alter the gut microbiome is fecal microbiota transplantation, such as from a young individual to an old individual. Methods such as probiotics can produce benefits, but do not last very long, and are also far from a complete solution. Can more be done to apply fine degrees of control to the composition and function of the gut microbiome without full transplantation of a new microbiome? In the research materials below, researchers suggest an intriguing approach based on engineering native microbes. At the end of the day, however, that full reset via fecal microbiota transplantation may just be the best approach to an aging microbiome, and not just because it can be implemented now. Engineering the Microbiome ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs