immune response tagged posts

Highlights • Gut microbes show a dichotomy in ecological strategy for access to nitrogen • Beneficial microbes are overrepresented in the endogenous N source guild • Diets that reduce availability of dietary N to microbes promote healthy aging • Diet impact on host-microbiome interaction can be simplified for modeling

Scientists are one step closer to understanding the link between different diet strategies and gut health, with new research presenting the first general principles for how diet impacts the microbiota. Researchers from the University of Sydney have found that the availability of intestinal nitrogen to microbes in the gut plays a key role in regulating interactions between gut microbes and their host animal.

“This research really lays the groundwork for future modellin...

Credit: Vera Kratochvil/public domain

Shifting Sleep Cycle affects Immune response, sleep quality. Ilia Karatsoreos, an assistant professor in WSU’s Department of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience, shifted mice from their usual cycle of sleeping and waking and saw that, while they got enough sleep, it was of poorer quality. The animals also had a disrupted immune response, leaving them more open to illness.

Most sleep research focuses on the effects of sleep deprivation or the overall amount of sleep an animal needs. This is generally referred to as sleep’s homeostatic process, which is driven by sleepiness or “sleep pressure.”
“…disruption of the circadian clock is nearly ubiquitous in our modern society” due to nighttime lighting, shift work, jet lag and even the blue-tinged light ...