Elucidating the Role of Tailocins in Microbes from the Human Gut
Abstract
Elucidating the Role of Tailocins in Microbes from the Human GutMicrobes within our digestive tract~collectively known as our gut microbiota~have become increasingly appreciated as important factors in establishing and maintaining good physical and mental health." However, we know little about the fundamental underpinnings of how the gut microbiota communicates with its host. We recently disco"vered a class of nanometer-scale syringe-like structures that can mediate direct bacteria-mammalian cell line or bacteria-invertebrate interactions. These structures are termed tailocins because they bear similarity to the tails of some bacterial viruses (known as" phage). Tailocins are produced by microbes from diverse environments including the human gut. However, the role of tailocins in med""iating the communication between the gut microbiota and human host remains unknown. Like the tails ofsome phage, we hypothesize tha"t tailocins interact with host cells by injecting contents across cell membranes and stimulating cellular activity. In this proposed" work, we will be the first to characterize tailocins produced by Bacteroides bacteria from the human gut and how they interact with" host cells. Herein we propose experiments designed to gain a fundamental scientific understanding of tailocins from human gut microbes as a first step towards evaluating their role as mediators of host health with the following specific aims:(1) Characterize the prevalence and diversity of tailocins from human gut microbiomes by mining metagenomics data within publicly available databases.(2) Functionally characterize genes and gene products encoding tailocin machinery from human Bacteroides isolates.(3) Determine the role of tailocins in interactions between Bacteroides species and human gut epithelial cells.Our proposed work has the potential to provide valuable insight into how our gut microbiota directly stimulates host health and inform strategies for new treatments in biomedicine through the manipulation of our gut microbiota.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2017
- Source ID
- N000141712677
Entities
People
- Nicholas J Shikuma
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Salk Institute for Biological Studies
- United States Navy