ScienceThe New York Times

Can The Bacteria In Your Gut Explain Your Mood?

Your Gut Bacteria Does More Than You Might Think
Jacqueline Howard
By 

Senior Science Editor, The Huffington Post

Scientists at PNNL are developing a model of the microbial environment inside the human gut. This model is composed of three-dimensional human intestinal cells cultured with specific gut bacteria. Changes in certain bacterial populations within the gut have been attributed to colon cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and neurological diseases such as Alzheimerâs and Huntingtonâs diseases. The three-dimensional model provides an approach to study how changes in bacteria affect gut health and overall human health. Research was funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and PNNLâs Laboratory Directed Research and Development initiative in chemical imaging.Team Members from PNNL: Janine Hutchison, Alice Dohnalkova, Becky Hess, Helen Kreuzer and Timothy Straub. Image was colorized by Chad Marrington.Terms of Use: Our images are freely and publicly available for use with the credit line, "Courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory." Please use provided caption information for use in appropriate context.
Scientists at PNNL are developing a model of the microbial environment inside the human gut. This model is composed of three-dimensional human intestinal cells cultured with specific gut bacteria. Changes in certain bacterial populations within the gut have been attributed to colon cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and neurological diseases such as Alzheimerâs and Huntingtonâs diseases. The three-dimensional model provides an approach to study how changes in bacteria affect gut health and overall human health. Research was funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and PNNLâs Laboratory Directed Research and Development initiative in chemical imaging.Team Members from PNNL: Janine Hutchison, Alice Dohnalkova, Becky Hess, Helen Kreuzer and Timothy Straub. Image was colorized by Chad Marrington.Terms of Use: Our images are freely and publicly available for use with the credit line, "Courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory." Please use provided caption information for use in appropriate context.

Eighteen vials were rocking back and forth on a squeaky mechanical device the shape of a butcher scale, and Mark Lyte was beside himself with excitement. ‘‘We actually got some fresh yesterday — freshly frozen,’’ Lyte said to a lab technician. Each vial contained a tiny nugget of monkey feces that were collected at the Harlow primate lab near Madison, Wis., the day before and shipped to Lyte’s lab on the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center campus in Abilene, Tex.

Lyte’s interest was not in the feces per se but in the hidden form of life they harbor. The digestive tube of a monkey, like that of all vertebrates, contains vast quantities of what biologists call gut microbiota. The genetic material of these trillions of microbes, as well as others living elsewhere in and on the body, is collectively known as the microbiome. Taken together, these bacteria can weigh as much as six pounds, and they make up a sort of organ whose functions have only begun to reveal themselves to science. Lyte has spent his career trying to prove that gut microbes communicate with the nervous system using some of the same neurochemicals that relay messages in the brain.

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