Researchers at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego have discovered thousands of previously unknown bile acids. Bile acids are a type of molecule that the gut microbiome uses to communicate with the rest of the body.
“Bile acids are important components of the language of the gut microbiome, and the discovery of so many new types greatly expands the vocabulary for understanding what the gut microbes do and how they do it. “It has spread,” said lead author Dr. Peter Dorestein. Professor, Skaggs School of Pharmacy, Professor of Pharmacology and Pediatrics, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. “It’s like going from ‘She Spotted Run’ to Shakespeare.”
As study co-author and bile acid expert Dr. Lee Hagee explains, this result is similar to a molecular Rosetta stone, a biochemical language that microbes use to influence distant organ systems. provide previously unknown insight into
Bile acids are generated in the liver, stored in the gallbladder, and eventually released into the intestines, where they are deployed to aid in the digestion of food after ingestion. Microorganisms in our intestines metabolize bile acids produced by the liver, turning them into a wide variety of molecules called secondary bile acids. Secondary bile acids tend to be easily absorbed by the body. Until now, the rich diversity and functional range of secondary bile acids has been underestimated by scientists.
“When I started in the lab, there were about a few hundred known bile acids,” said study co-author Ipshita Mohanty, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Dorestein’s lab. “We are now discovering thousands more bile acids and working to understand that these bile acids do much more than just aid in digestion.”
Bile acids not only aid in digestion, they are also important signaling molecules that help regulate the immune system and perform important metabolic functions such as controlling lipid and glucose metabolism. These molecules also help explain how microbes in the gut can influence distant organ systems.
“Because bile acids interact with our microbiome, the effects of bile acids extend far beyond the digestive system, and the diseases we treat with bile acids can extend as well. The list of diseases associated with acid is a mile long, and there are several FDAs that need to approve this type of acid as a treatment,” said co-author and postdoctoral fellow in Dorestein’s lab. said one Dr. Helena Mannocchio Russo.
To discover these molecules, researchers leveraged unique resources at the University of California, San Diego. Dorrestein is director of the Collaborative Microbial Metabolite Center (CMMC). CMMC is the first collaboration of its kind between UC San Diego and UC Riverside to collect and centralize information on metabolites produced by microorganisms to help researchers learn more about their effects. It is intended to help you learn. About human health and the environment.
“While data sharing is common in other fields of biology, such as genomics, until now there hasn’t been an infrastructure in place for microbial metabolomics researchers to share data,” Dorestein said. I am. As computing power increases, we hope to see more breakthroughs from CMMC. ”
Earlier this year, the team debuted a new tool that can instantly match microbes with the metabolites they produce. The current study is the first of many that may utilize this tool for specific types of molecules. The researchers next hope to explore the specific functions of their newly discovered bile acids and apply their approach to other types of biomolecules, such as lipids and other types of acids.
“We are rewriting the textbook of human metabolism,” Dorrestein said. “If you had talked to me a few years ago, I would have said it would take decades to solve this puzzle, but now it could happen within five years. This is a truly remarkable change in our ability to treat disease, and we believe it will revolutionize the way we approach disease. ”
