Microbial Genes and their Flipping mechanism to regulate Gut Health

Jun, 2021 - By WMR

Gut microbes produce a particular enzyme that changes the conformation of the hydroxyl groups of the bile acid molecules, which actually renders the acid molecules in to something which, can be either useful or harmful.

Human body is an owner of trillion of microorganisms residing in their body. These microbes are really essential as they take a bigger role in driving our metabolism function in the right path. They help in producing essential enzymes that improves our digestive function and also helps in the production of essential bioactive component like vitamin K, vitaminB2 when maintaining the metabolic output ratio of the body. Probably for that reason nowadays doctors are actually prescribing probiotic nutrition that could maintain the body’s metabolism in a proper way.

A new study done in the University of Illinois defines the role of these good microbes and their gene in different metabolic study. The research was first done in context to the microbial role of the fat absorption in the body along with the role of Bile of the liver to digest fat in to smaller globules of fatty acid molecules are transferred to the small intestinal region, where the microbes convert these molecules in to something very useful.

Gut microbes produce a particular enzyme that changes the conformation of the hydroxyl groups of the bile acid molecules. This change in the conformation actually renders the acid molecules in to something which, can be either useful or harmful. Locating these enzymes were a tough job indeed, although scientists were somewhat successful in locating few of them, with one still needed to be located. To find that missing one they also looked in to several previous studies on this matter where they found a molecule known as Carbon-12 associated with a microbe named as Clostridium paraputrificum. Identifying the genome of the identified microbes they engineered that genome in to a common bacteria, E. coli, to understand the related conformational change as their function afterwards.

Although complete information is still not known about the flipping action of the carbon-12 enzyme, and they hope that relevant information with emerge out from their study which, can be major success towards maintaining intestinal health.