Friday, November 21st, 2008

A Community of Thousands -- In Your Gut

Scanning electron micrograph of Escherichia coli, grown in culture and adhered to a cover slip. Credit: Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH

New work published this week indicates that the human intestines may be home to over 5,600 different bacterial species and strains. Some of those species are harmful, some are harmless, some are essential to life -- and some are somewhat of a mystery, never before being cultured in the lab.

In this segment, we'll learn about new studies that take a census of just what lives inside your gut. We'll also hear about what happens when the gut bacterial community is hit with a dose of antibiotics. Writing in the journal PLOS Biology, a team of researchers reports that people being treated with the antibiotic ciprofloxacin may have the bacterial communities in their intestines altered for weeks or even months. We'll talk about why the researchers think that's significant.

Guests

David Relman
Professor of Medicine, and of Microbiology and Immunology
Stanford University School of Medicine
Chief of Infectious Diseases
Veteran's Affairs, Medical Center Palo Alto
Stanford, California