Early-Life gut inflammation drives sex-dependent shifts in the microbiome-endocrine-brain axis.

Despite recent advances in understanding the connection between the gut microbiota and the adult brain, there remains a wide knowledge gap in how gut inflammation impacts brain development. We hypothesized that intestinal inflammation in early life would negatively affect neurodevelopment through dysregulation of microbiota communication to the brain. We therefore developed a novel pediatric chemical model of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), an incurable condition affecting millions of people worldwide.

Single-strain behavior predicts responses to environmental pH and osmolality in the gut microbiota.

Changes to gut environmental factors such as pH and osmolality due to disease or drugs correlate with major shifts in microbiome composition; however, we currently cannot predict which species can tolerate such changes or how the community will be affected. Here, we assessed the growth of 92 representative human gut bacterial strains spanning 28 families across multiple pH values and osmolalities . The ability to grow in extreme pH or osmolality conditions correlated with the availability of known stress response genes in many cases, but not all, indicating that novel pathways may participate in protecting against acid or osmotic stresses.

Microbial endocrinology: the mechanisms by which the microbiota influences host sex steroids.

Recent progress in microbial endocrinology has propelled this field from initially providing correlational links to defining the mechanisms by which microbes influence systemic sex hormones. Importantly, the interaction between the gut-resident bacteria and host-secreted hormones has been shown to be critical for host development as well as hormone-mediated disease progression. This review investigates how microbes affect active sex hormone levels, with a focus on gut-associated bacteria hormonal modifications and the resulting host physiological status.