The bodies of multicellular organisms, including humans, are covered with commensal microbes, also called the microbiota. The majority of these are bacteria located in the gastrointestinal tract. The gut microbiota maintain many physiological functions including the development and maturation of the immune system. The microbiota... click to read more

Our gut microbial community is not as stable as one might think. Our diet has a big impact on the type and amount of bacteria we have in our gut. Every time we eat, we are not only satisfying our nutritional needs, but we are... click to read more

Microbes in the human gut play essential roles in maintaining human health. Gut microbes carry out many of these roles using a large toolkit of enzymes that can metabolize and transform larger, complex compounds into smaller compounds. Microbial enzymes breakdown many compounds from the human... click to read more