Inside your gut, countless bacteria cooperate to help digest food and keep you healthy. But they also fiercely compete for space, nutrients, and survival. This microbial battle has been ongoing for millennia, but research has mainly focused on harmful bacteria linked to disease.
Andrew Goodman’s lab at Yale has explored how these friendly gut bacteria engage in this ‘microbial arms race’ and found a clever strategy they use to outsmart their rivals.
The research team discovered that friendly gut bacteria of the genus Bacteroides inject a protein called Bte1 into their rivals. This protein disrupts how the rival bacteria fold their proteins, breaking them down.
All cells, including bacteria, need protein-folding systems to stay alive. This process ensures proteins form the right shapes to do their jobs. Bte1 hijacks this process in rival cells, turning their protein-folding systems into anti-folding machines that tangle proteins into useless clumps.
This makes the rival bacteria weaker and more vulnerable to stress, especially in inflamed gut environments. The researchers also found evidence that some microbes have evolved ways to inactivate Bte1, with Bte1 evolving to avoid these evasion strategies.
First author Bentley Lim Goodman said, “The idea that there are good and bad microbes in our gut is only part of the picture. Our findings show that regular bacteria compete in the most intricate and elaborate ways to outsmart their rivals.”
Inhibiting protein-folding systems is a key research strategy for cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The Goodman lab’s work suggests that our gut microbes might offer new insights into targeting protein folding in human diseases.
Journal Reference:
- Bentley Lim, Jinghua Xu, Igor Wierzbicki, et al. A human gut bacterium antagonizes neighboring bacteria by altering their protein-folding ability. Cell Host & Microbe. DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2025.01.008
Source: Tech Explorist
