443: Gut Group Gives Gamma Guard

This episode: Certain gut microbes protect mice from harmful
effects of high-energy radiation!


Download Episode (7.3 MB, 10.6 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Solenopsis invicta virus-1


News item



Takeaways




High-energy radiation can be very dangerous. Besides a
long-term increased risk of cancer due to DNA damage, a high
enough dose of radiation can cause lethal damage to multiple
systems in the body, especially the gastrointestinal tract
and the immune system. Finding new ways to treat or prevent
damage from radiation would be very helpful for improving the
safety of space travel, nuclear energy, and radiotherapy for
cancer.


 


In this study, some mice exposed to a typically lethal dose
of radiation survived without ill effects, thanks to certain
microbes in their gut. Transferring these microbes to other
mice helped those mice survive radiation as well, and even
just the metabolites that the bacteria produced were helpful
for protecting the cells in the body most affected by
radiation.



 
Journal Paper:
Guo H, Chou W-C, Lai Y, Liang K, Tam JW, Brickey WJ, Chen L,
Montgomery ND, Li X, Bohannon LM, Sung AD, Chao NJ, Peled JU,
Gomes ALC, van den Brink MRM, French MJ, Macintyre AN, Sempowski
GD, Tan X, Sartor RB, Lu K, Ting JPY. 2020. Multi-omics analyses
of radiation survivors identify radioprotective microbes and
metabolites. Science 370:eaay9097.


Other interesting stories:



Algae incorporated into 3D-printed human tissues for
research can provide oxygen for cells

Bacteria in sea squirts produce potentially useful
antifungal compound




 


Email questions or comments to bacteriofiles at gmail dot
com. Thanks for listening!


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