Fecal Microbiota Transplants: The Ins and Outs of FMT

Poop. You flush it, and usually that’s the end of the story. But to scientists like Mark Smith, poop is more than just waste — it’s medicine. A healthy intestinal tract is teeming with trillions of microbes, which help us stay healthy and fend off attacks from bad bacteria that make us sick. Antibiotics can wreak havoc on our microbiome, leaving it vulnerable to harmful, and sometimes even life-threatening pathogens. Mark Smith has a solution…poop. Infection by the aggressive bacterium Clostridium difficile can cause chronic and painful diarrhea, and even death. Patients who aren’t helped by the standard antibiotic treatment have turned to “fecal transplants” as a last resort — and doctors have observed remarkable recovery rates when transplanting stool from healthy donors into sick patients. But how does this medicine actually…work?

I Contain Multitudes is a multi-part video series dedicated to exploring the wonderful, hidden world of the microbiome. The series is hosted by science writer Ed Yong and produced by HHMI Tangled Bank Studios in association with Room 608.