Gut check
A new resource maps how gut microbes may alter drugs and food in ways that affect human health.
Microbes in the human gut can play helpful roles by producing vitamins or breaking down complex carbohydrates. Collectively, gut microbes carry out these roles using a large toolkit of enzymes that catalyze a diverse range of chemical reactions, some of which cannot be carried out by human enzymes. However, these microbial enzymes can also cause harm if they alter drugs in a way that makes them toxic or prevents them from working. Little is known about which microbial enzymes interact with which foods and drugs, or how these interactions affect human health.
Guthrie et al. have now developed and tested a tool called MicrobeFDT that can help researchers to understand these complex interactions. In MicrobeFDT, 10,000 compounds produced by the human body or found in food or drugs are grouped based on their structure. Compounds are linked to the microbial enzymes that interact with them and drugs are annotated with information on known toxicities. The result is a network where compounds with similar structure are linked to each other.
If a microbial enzyme interacts with one compound in a group, it may interact with related compounds as well, potentially causing similar effects on human health. The network makes it easier for researchers to work out which compounds are affected by particular gut microbes. For example, MicrobeFDT suggested how gut microbes might alter the structure of an ovarian cancer drug called altretamine, which can cause diarrhea and kidney damage as side effects. Experiments confirmed that the predicted structural change does occur in human feces.
MicrobeFDT may increase how quickly researchers can assess harmful interactions between gut microbes, food, and drugs. It also may help them to develop new strategies to improve human health based on how microbial enzymes interact with food and drugs.
Originally published at https://elifesciences.org/digests/42866.
