Introducing a new gut microbiology journal, aptly titled Gut Microbiology.

All Article Publishing Charges (APCs) are waived for 2 years!

Please send your exciting research our way.

www.sciencedirect.com/journal/gut-...

Fabulous meeting in Hong Kong by the New Cornerstone Science Foundation. It was great to meet so many researchers in person whose work I have admired for some time. Thanks for having me!

Given pfoA+ C. perf damages the epithelum, we explored competitive exclusion using live organoid co-culture. This revealed that pre-culture with pfoA- C. perf protects the preterm gut against pathogenic pfoA+ C. perf.

We found that generally the CFS from pfoA- C. perf could suppress the pro-inflammatory response in stimulated organoids. There was also no adverse impacts on inflammation from this CFS.

This is all very exciting for a potential therapy, but not if it negatively impacts the host. To study this we used preterm intestinal organoids and the recently developed co-culture system that accurately recapitulates O2 levels across the epithelium

... but promoted the growth of naturally occurring infant B. breve and B. longum (though not probiotic derived B. infantis). Because the CFS was harvested after growth on glucose, this is not explained purely by cross-feeding of LNT and other HMO degradation products

Now we wanted to see what impact cell free supernatant (CFS) from C. perf would have on infant gut microbiome development. Jon Chapman found it inhibited the growth of preterm infant pathobionts...

Side step into some biochemistry - We found C. perf is able to use the sialic acid from DSLNT, but generally can not use LNT, which it "cross-feeds" to Bifidobacterium. The full digestion of DSLNT by C. perf was possible only when the β 1-3 bond was cleaved first.

We therefore focused on a pfoA- C. perf isolate for further investigation, owing to it being in the hypovirulent linage V, lacking the pfoA toxin gene, its ability to use health-associated DSLNT, and its production of several beneficial SCFAs and metabolites

Fantastic work by @halllab.bsky.social @raymondkiu.bsky.social showed C. perf carry the perfringolysin O (pfoA) gene is linked to disease, but an absence of this toxin places C. perf in the hypovirulent (i.e., health-associated) lineage.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The work started with Andrea finding Clostridium perfringens (C. perf) cultured from a preterm infant could grow on a range of HMOs. We expanded this into other infant Clostridium isolates and Greg also found C. perf is more prevalent in healthy preterm infants.

Introducing our latest preprint which discovered Clostridium sp. grow on HMOs. Using computational and experimental approaches we show this has beneficial consequences for the developing microbiome and the host. But there is nuance.

A 🧵...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...