Evolutionary Secrets of the Microbiome

How a gut microbiota deals with changes in habitat through reversible genetic inversion

Researchers from the Technion have discovered how a gut microbiota responds to changes in habitat by reversibly inverting its genetic code.

How does our gut respond to shifting circumstances and adapt? What is the source of this essential and crucial flexibility? Scientist at Technion are trying to decode the genius of the intestinal microbiome, from microbiota through genetic inversion.

In partnership with Harvard university scientists, assistant Professor Naama Geva-zatorsky and doctoral student Nadav Ben-Assa of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine have decoded a reversible genetic inversion process that lets a bacterial species of the gut microbiota cope with changes in its environment. Their results were published in Nucleic Acids Research, an Oxford University Press peer-reviewed scientific journal.

The human microbiota is a group of microbes (bacteria, viruses, etc.) that colonize the human body’s inner and outer surfaces. The microbiota species of the human intestine is the most numerous and complex. 

Gut microbiota have a critical coping mechanism in the gut’s complex climate, which is constantly changing in terms of structural, technological, and chemical changes. Rapid, reversible changes in genomes in response to external stimulus are one mechanism that aids the gut microbiota’s efficiency.

Bacteroides fragilis, one of the most common bacterial organisms in the human gut, is discussed in the article published in Nucleic Acids Research. the bacterium has the ability to invert a large number of specified regions across its entire genome sequence. The Researchers were particularly interested in the connection between this capacity and the organism’s gene expression.

The are reversible genetic inversions, according to the researchers, and are dependent on recombination of regions in the genome in a major structure B. fragilis organism. As a result, the recombination has a large impact on the organism’s gene’s function , including the expression of many important molecules.

The Technion President’s Fund, the Alon Fellowships, the Israel Science Foundation, the Applebaum family foundation, the Gutwirth Fellowships, and Human Frontiers all contributed to the research.