George Birchenough

Microbiota colonising the new born colon prime goblet cells producing the gut-protective mucus

📷 Åsa Johansson et al @gobletcellguy.bsky.social
University of Gothenburg in @jem.org

➡️ bpod.org.uk/archive/2025...

Happy to see this finally published 🙌 Thanks to the editors and reviewers for the constructive process 😎

YouTube video by BluebackHotrod Charlie Brooker HIGNFY Intro - 11/11/2016

Here is black mirror's creator Charlie Brooker guest hosting a long running British satirical news show the same week that Trump was first elected, enjoy 🫠
youtu.be/LZIDgYEvDn4?...

5th Ghent Gut Inflammation Group Meeting 15-16 May 2025, Ghent, Belgium Host-microbiota interactions in health and disease

Abstract deadline for #GGIG2025 is approaching fast! Don’t miss your chance to share your research at the 5th Ghent Gut Inflammation Group Meeting! 🧬🦠 www.vibconferences.be/events/5th-g...

Which cells use Myd88 to control Segmented Filamentous Bacteria colonization? Here work explores the hematopoietic MyD88/IL-22 axis during SFB growth. www.mucosalimmunology.org/article/S193...

Degradation of the intestinal mucus layer by the ETEC protease EatA is species specific determined by the structure of the MUC2 mucin Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) infections are a leading cause of diarrheal illness, responsible for an estimated 100,000 deaths annually. ETEC pathogenesis is driven by various virulence fact...

My colleague Sjoerd van der Post just quietly dropped a preprint defining the interaction of the #ETEC SPATE family enzyme EatA with intestinal Muc2, providing some fascinating insights into host specific #mucus degradation 🤯. Check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Nice discussion around the ongoing #glycoRNA debate, check out the comments

In our lates review, we explore new insights into the gut-joint axis, a connection is not absolute. A causal role for the microbiota is context-dependent, and arthritis can also arise independently through sterile mechanisms: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kkn55Eb0R...

#GutJointAxis

Say what now?!

So excited to share this latest work by @kelseyhuus.bsky.social !!!
She shows that flagellin in the human gut affects whether or not people develop fever in response to vaccine, and the amount of flagellin reflects diet

Fair point, but I think there are issues with the paper itself - missing methods regarding enzymatic treatment of colonic mucus, amongst others.

I think it's safe to say that the reviewers were not into glycobiology, which is a shame because it's the mechanistic basis of the paper.. 🫠

Here's another for you, also a Nature family journal funnily enough 😅:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

glycowork v1.5 is now released! We're excited to see the cool things you'll be doing with it:-)

Lots of new & improved functionality, check out the Release notes for the full change log:

Metagenomic estimation of dietary intake from human stool - Nature Metabolism Diener et al. present a method that allows the estimation of dietary intake from human stool by detecting food-derived DNA in faecal metagenomes.

Happy to announce that MEDI, our method to quantify dietary intake through metagenomics is out now. 🧬 🧪🧫🦠 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

#metagenomics #microbiome #microbiomesky

So what is MEDI? A combination of two things:

For all the #mucus fans out there who believe in our knight in slimy armour and want to join the starter pack 👇 contact @gobletcellguy.bsky.social
#mucusmatters

Host-specific microbiome and genomic signatures in Bifidobacterium reveal co-evolutionary and functional adaptations across diverse animal hosts Animal hosts harbour divergent microbiota, including various Bifidobacterium species and strains, yet their evolutionary relationships, and functional adaptions remain understudied. By integrating tax...

1/ 🚨 New preprint alert! 🚨 We’re thrilled to share our latest work exploring microbiome & genomic #Bifidobacterium co-evolutionary & functional signatures across diverse animal hosts. This has been a long time coming, & huge credit to Magda for her incredible hard work as first author! 🐾✨👇

This was ultimately traced back to significant flagellar upreg in the FimH KO bugs, but I think that an important moral of the story here is that for highly motile bugs, the mucus "barrier" really isn't 🫣

Interestingly loss of the #FimH adhesin disrupted UPEC mucosal associations in vivo, but weirdly dramatically increased its capacity to penetrate the mucus barrier ex vivo

Mechanisms of uropathogenic E. coli mucosal association in the gastrointestinal tract Inverse regulation of flagella and type 1 pili facilitates access to colon mucus by uropathogenic E. coli.

This was a fun study from Scott Hultgrens lab that we contributed to, led by Philippe Azimzadeh, looking at #UPEC interactions with colonic #mucus:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Carbohydrate-active enzymes from Akkermansia muciniphila break down mucin O-glycans to completion - Nature Microbiology Biochemical characterization of 66 carbohydrate-active enzymes from the gut microorganism Akkermansia muciniphila reveals that these enzymes can break down a range of host glycans, including mucin, wh...

New paper out today from the lab on Akkermansia muciniphila 🦠and how it breaks down host glycans! Very proud of my group, especially @cassiebakshani.bsky.social who did an amazing job. @naturemicrobiol.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#microsky

A metagenomic ‘dark matter’ enzyme catalyses oxidative cellulose conversion - Nature A metalloenzyme capable of oxidatively cleaving cellulose, found in a microbial community specialized in lignocellulose degradation, could enable sustainable biofuel production.

Discovery of a new Cu-dependent cellulose degrading enzyme for biomass conversion #glycotime (trying to overlook the extraneous proton, see if you can find it)

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Don’t miss #ASRI2025 in St. Paul Minnesota May 17-21. Check out fantastic talks on the Maternal, Fetal, and Neonatal Immunology and submit your abstract by 2/15! theasri.org/Abstracts-Po...

Huh, not sure why that link didn't work... anyway it's pinned to my profile 😆

I've added you to our mucus starter pack, please forward to anyone who might be interested :)

/starter-pack-short/7Z84CmG

Still time to submit late breaking abstract to this fantastic meeting: www.perinatal-immunity.de/en/symposium...

Excerpt from a public letter Roald Dahl wrote encouraging people to vaccinate their children. Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything. “Are you feeling all right?” I asked her. “I feel all sleepy,” she said. In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead. The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her. On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunized against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.

The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.

Just in case any new #mucus, #Goblet cell or #mucin folks have joined up recently, we have a small but growing starter pack for this area - let me know if you want in 🫡
go.bsky.app/7Z84CmG

Yes