I know I complain all the time about news stories and people "
overselling the microbiome". Mind you, I believe microbial communities are likely to be found to have very very important roles in the biology of the plants and animals and other organisms on which they live, but I worry about overhyping the possibilities. But thankfully, there are some good researchers at work out there documenting just what the microbiome can and does do. And the results continue to be promising.
Here is the one that caught my eye most recently:
BBC News - 'Weight loss gut bacterium' found about this
PNAS paper. While the study is in mice and it is what one could call "limited" in some ways, it is really fascinating and has much promise. Basically, they isolated a new bacterium (with the awkward name of
Akkermansia muciniphila, and did a series of experiments in mice looking at the role this bacterium can play in many mouse gut properties. But most interesting, treatment of mice with this bacterium (and only when the bacterium was alive) led to a reduction in high fat induced metabolic disorders and obesity. I am still re-reading the paper but the result seems solid. And exciting.
So - there is no need to oversell the microbiome when the results coming in sell themselves ...
UPDATE 30 minutes after posting
Of course, I should have checked to see if Ed Yong wrote anything about this. And he did:
The Mucus-Lover that Stops Mice from Getting Fat. Read his post. It is excellent. With ALL sorts of links and background and other detail.
