Pooping our way to a healthier tomorrow

Back in December we wrote about the human microbiota and how the microbiome contributes more to the human physiology than we think; disregulation of the microbiome has been linked to chronic C. difficile infection, diabetes, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's disease, and perhaps even autism. Altering the microbiome of affected individuals so that they resemble "healthy" individuals through fecal transplant has been shown to reverse the symptoms of many of these diseases showing that disorder is linked to a change of physiology due to changes in the microbiota (in fact, fecal transplant is more effective than antibiotics in treating chronic C. difficile). Before we go putting fecal transplant on a pede-stool, the scientists and the FDA are still debating how to regulate this bowel movement movement (it's a hard job, but somebody's got to poo it!).

Currently fecal microbiota is regulated as a biological, which means it has stricter control than some other substances and really bungs up both research and treatment of patients who could benefit from it (what a crappy situation). Scientists are arguing that fecal microbiota should be treated as a tissue or given it's own category, similar to what is done with blood.This would allow greater flexibility for both clinicians and researchers to poo what they gotta poo.

Microbiome research is one of the fastest emerging areas of research. Next generation sequencing is pushing this area of research to flush out our understanding of how the microbiome contributes to our physiology. NGS allows rapid analysis of mixed sequences to determine not  only the the species of microbes present, but the exact composition of a microbial community.

To support NGS workflows, Aurora offers the VERSA GENE, a complete walk-away solution for genomics workflows including NGS library preparation (grab your newspaper and take some time for yourself). The accurate liquid handling provides consistency between library preps and this open-system platform allows researchers to leverage different library preparation kits and chemistries available to fully realize everything that NGS can poo. At Aurora we believe that supporting science that can truly make a difference is not just a job, it's our doody!

It's a community thing

        What if I told you that 90% of your genome isn't human. What if I told you that for every human cell, your body hosts 10 bacterial cells. What if I told you that bacteria don't just live in us, they are a part of us. It's true, bacteria outnumber us 10 to 1 in our own bodies, their DNA and biochemistry contributes to our own biochemistry as a greater "super-being". That's right, we are all super-beings made up of part human, part bacteria. It doesn't seem so bad when someone calls you a super-being does it? The truth is bacteria are as much a part of us as they are just "on us". Studies have linked our bacterial populations to many diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, obesity, chronic C. difficile infection, and even tumorigenesis in cancer. The genes and biochemistry of bacteria contribute to all these things.
          How you ask? Different sub-populations of bacteria contribute different aspects to your microbial community. Just like the TV show "Community" different sub-populations play different roles in the group; depending on who is or isn't present, the whole group can work well together, or fall apart in a hilarious episode of mayhem (it isn't as funny when it happens in real life...). If one role is over or under represented the entire system can be thrown off leading to a disease state.
           Recently these conditions have had good success being treated by restoring the microbial balance to that of a "healthy" situation. Obesity has been reversed, insulin sensitivity increased, and bowel diseases such as IBS and Crohn's have been treated through fecal transplant therapy. Yup, it is disgusting as it sounds but it goes to illustrate how important a healthy microbial community is to our overall health. Transplant not only temporarily helps to change the recipients microbial population but these changes are retained over time essentially transplanting a healthy microbial community and resulting in real biochemical changes in the host due to different interactions with microbes.
           It is being increasingly revealed that our microbiome plays a huge role in our body's physiology. Microbiome studies have greatly increased in number in recent years and it seems as though we are just beginning to uncover the extensive interplay between our body and our microbes. As the analytical powers of Next Generation Sequencing continue to increase we will be able to solve more and more of these mysteries. Prospective samples for NGS studies need to be handled with uniformity to ensure that no one species is over or under represented due to processing error. Automation helps ensure that each sample is handled in exactly the same way and helps remove sources of error associated with manual techniques. To learn more about Aurora's automated NGS library prep workstation, click here.

More info about Aurora Biomed: www.aurorabiomed.com