Microbiomes

Research from UCLA’s Department of Urology shows that the semen microbiome, especially microbes like Lactobacillus iners, can influence male fertility by affecting sperm motility, opening new paths for understanding and treating male infertility. A new study finds that a small group of microorganisms may be influencing sperm motility.You may have heard about the gut microbiome and its influence on a person’s overall health and well-being. It turns out that the same may hold true for the semen microbiome.According to…

A lot has been written and said about the gut microbiome – the community of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea that lives in our intestines. But the gut is not the only place that has a microbiome.The mouth, nose, skin, lungs, and genitals have microbiomes of their own. And they all play an important role in our health.Here is a brief introduction to each one.Oral microbiomeArguably, this was the first microbiome discovered.In the late 1600s, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch scientist, scraped the inside of his mouth…

Microbes are everywhere, and the ones in our bodies appear to be incredibly important for our health. They’ve developed intricate relationships with other living systems, feeding on chemicals in their environments to produce other chemicals—some of which are more beneficial to nearby organisms than others. Getting microbes to work for us has been a tantalizing prospect to scientists for decades. Can we tweak the genomes of these microbes to control exactly which chemicals they break down or produce, for example? What if…

The question is: can we tweak the genomes of these microbes to control exactly which chemicals they break down or produce? Imagine the possibilities. What if we could get microbes to help us reduce pollution? What if we could create microbes that make medicines, or that churn out gut-friendly products in our intestines? Modified microbes seem to help treat cancer in mice, and human trials are on the way, as I reported earlier this year. (For a more general update on gene editing, you can read about how the editing tool…

For many people, spring has brought with it the dreaded symptoms of hay fever, such as itchy eyes, sneezing, and a stuffy nose. Hay fever is common, affecting up to 42 percent of people. It occurs when the immune system overreacts to allergens including pollen.Research suggests there could be a link between hay fever and the microbiome, the collection of microorganisms that live in and on our bodies. Specifically, the composition of a person's gut and nasal microbiomes may play a role in the development of hay fever…

Researchers have enlisted a new kind of helper to monitor the microbiomes of cities around the world: the honeybee. A recently published analysis shows that the debris which gathers at the bottom of their hives can reveal a great deal about what's going on in their urban environments.Much like our guts, cities too have microbiomes, a composite of various types of microorganisms that thrive in the environment. And, much like analyzing the microbiome in our guts can reveal important details about our physical condition,…

To find out if the microbes being introduced might be “good” or “bad”, Fackelmann and her colleagues analyzed the microbiomes and looked up individual types of microbes in databases to work out what they do. They found that, with more plastic, there were more microbes that are known to break down plastic to some degree. There were also more microbes that are known to be resistant to antibiotics, and with the potential to cause disease. Fackelmann and her colleagues didn’t assess the health of the birds, so they don’t…

As with many autoimmune diseases, chronic inflammation is linked to the development of multiple sclerosis (MS), a condition that attacks the sheaths around nerves and can lead to muscle weakness and spasms, difficulty walking or moving, stiffness, pain and more. While current methods of dealing with the disease focus on symptom management, researchers at the University of Virginia (UVA) were interested in seeing if the inflammation-causing mechanism could be turned off at its source. So, they investigated the microbes…

New Zealand’s critically endangered kākāpō, the world’s heaviest parrot, is flightless and nocturnal, with fragrant moss-green feathers, an odd, whiskery face, up to a 90-year life span—and a gut microbiome made almost entirely of the bacterium Escherichia coli. Like humans, other animals carry trillions of bacteria, viruses, archaea and fungi in their digestive tracts, on their skin, and elsewhere: internal ecosystems that help them extract nutrients from food, fight pathogens and develop immunity. Now, as genetic…

Image: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)Experts at Harvard and elsewhere are proposing a new type of bank be set up nationwide: a poop bank. In a paper this week, they argue that it should be possible for people to deposit a fecal sample relatively early on in life, which can then be stored indefinitely and later used to restore their unbalanced gut microbiome if needed. But theyadd that there would be many challenges involved in creating this system, such as finding the optimal storage conditions and cost.Fecal microbiota…