Natures wonders: gut microbiome controls baby health (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, March 30, 2023, 20:06 (602 days ago) @ David Turell

A bacteria uses nitrogen from Mother's milk:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230327160617.htm

"More than a decade ago, Sela and his team noticed that Bifidobacterium infantis, a beneficial bacterium that colonizes the infant gut, had the ability to degrade urea, a molecule that mammals excrete as waste in urine.

"'There's a lot of urea in breast milk and since it's typically excreted out of the system, and this major colonizer has the ability to degrade it, we thought it's possible that the microbes are utilizing this waste product as a nitrogen source within the infant gut," Sela says.

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"To test their hypothesis, researchers in the Sela lab, including lead author Xiaomeng You, a graduate research assistant, demonstrated that the B. infantis bacteria, when fed urea, were able to use it as a nitrogen source.

"They then tracked the urea nitrogen with a stable isotope. "It gets incorporated into all kinds of bacterial products that the bacteria makes, and that was really insightful," Sela says. "It gives us the strongest evidence that the bacteria is utilizing urea nitrogen for its basic metabolism."

"The next step is to examine the process in the human system -- "looking at mom's milk, infant growth and development, and microbiome function as it pertains to urea utilization," Sela says. "If we want to have clinical or nutritional relevancy in humans, we have to understand how it works in babies.'"

Comment: bacteria have been around since life started with Archaea. It is purposeful as they are very helpful in many ways.