Yeast and bacteria can team up to cause trouble
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October 16, 2017 at 2:00 pm
Fungi may affect gut health in unexpected ways, new research suggests.
High-fat diets may alter relationships between bacteria and fungi in mice’s intestines, contributing to obesity, researchers report October 11 in mSphere. In independent work, researchers report that a fungus teams up with two types of bacteria to fuel gut inflammation in people with Crohn’s disease. That work was summarized October 4 in Digestive and Liver Disease.
Together, the studies are part of a growing body of research indicating that relationships between the bacterial and fungal kingdoms can affect health, says David Andes, a fungal biologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. Andes wasn’t involved in either study.
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Scientists have already described links between health issues, including obesity, and gut bacteria — often called the microbiome. But far less is known about the role of the gut’s fungal mix, or mycobiome.
“To get the whole picture,” says Andes, “we’re going to need to start looking at the mycobiome in addition to the microbiome.”
As part of that picture, fungal biologist and pediatrician Cheryl Gale of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis wanted to know whether high-fat diets change fungal communities as they do bacterial mixes.
Gale’s team fed mice either standard mouse chow or high-fat chow. As expected, mice on the high-fat diet gained weight, and the mix of bacteria in their guts shifted. Firmicutes bacteria associated with obesity increased, while Bacteroidetes bacteria decreased in abundance.
Fungi changed too. Mice fed high-fat chow had less Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast and more Candida albicans in their guts than did mice that ate standard chow. S. cerevisiae is a yeast used in making wine, beer and bread and has been associated with good health. C. albicans is an organism that causes many yeast infections.
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