Scientific Publications
Guest Editor of Special Issue “Gut Bacteria-Mucus Interaction”of Microorganisms. This special issue belongs to the section “Gut Microbiota”.
Microorganisms
This issue gathers 8 articles covering various mechanistic aspects of gut bacteria-mucus interactions and impact on health and disease. These include comprehensive overviews of the role of mucus in the interaction with the gut microbiota in humans [1] or in host-pathogen interactions during infections in farmed animals e.g. pigs, cow, chicken and fish [2]. Four papers specifically address bacterial adhesion to mucus and mucin glycans using different methodologies including atomic force microscopy (AFM) and optical tweezers (OT) [3], carbohydrate or mucin microarrays [4], and in vitro adhesion plate assays [5] or slot-blot analysis [6] using fluorescent-labelled microorganisms. These articles, focusing on probiotics species such as Lactobacillus acidophilus [5] or pathogens species such as Helicobacter pylori [4] highlight how the origin, chemical structure and glycosylation pattern of different mucins as determined by MALDI MS-MS analysis may affect recognition by pathogenic or commensal bacteria [6]. This adhesion is often driven by several mechanisms such as cell-surface glycans or proteins that act in parallel or in a consecutive manner [3]. Two articles provide further information on how diet including prebiotics [5], food additives or environmental pollutants [7] influence mucus-bacteria interaction and the role of cell-surface proteins in this interaction. One article is dedicated to a well-known mucin-degrader, Akkermansia muciniphila, revealing its occurrence in other anatomical regions of the gastrointestinal tract although its optimal ecological niche remains the mucus layer in the colon [8]. It is clear from this Special Issue that mucus-bacteria interactions are strain-, host- and niche-specific, and the result of an intricate interplay between the host local environment, pathogenic and commensal bacteria inhabiting this niche, and the diet. Collectively these articles stress the importance of bacteria-mucus interactions in influencing health or disease outcome in humans and animals. Gaining molecular knowledge in this field is warranted to provide better diagnostics and risk assessment and help design new probiotic or glycan-based nutritional strategies to improve human and animal health.
Microorganisms
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