Symbiotic Human Gut Bacteria with Variable Metabolic Priorities for Host Mucosal Glycans.

ABSTRACT:

Unlabelled

Many symbiotic gut bacteria possess the ability to degrade multiple polysaccharides, thereby providing nutritional advantages to their hosts. Like microorganisms adapted to other complex nutrient environments, gut symbionts give different metabolic priorities to substrates present in mixtures. We investigated the responses of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, a common human intestinal bacterium that metabolizes more than a dozen different polysaccharides, including the O-linked glycans that are abundant in secreted mucin. Experiments in which mucin glycans were presented simultaneously with other carbohydrates show that degradation of these host carbohydrates is consistently repressed in the presence of alternative substrates, even by B. thetaiotaomicron previously acclimate

SUBMITTER: Pudlo NA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4659458 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature