Sulfosugar tagged posts

A Sulfosugar from Green Vegetables Promotes the Growth of Important Gut Bacteria

Fluorescently labelled bacteria on black background
Gut section with fluorescently labelled bacteria (© Huimin Ye).

A team of scientists has analyzed how microbes in the gut process the plant-based, sulfur-containing sugar sulfoquinovose. Their study discovered that specialized bacteria cooperate in the utilization of the sulfosugar, producing hydrogen sulfide. This gas has disparate effects on human health: at low concentrations, it has an anti-inflammatory effect, while increased amounts of hydrogen sulfide in the intestine, in turn, are associated with diseases such as cancer.

With the consumption of a single type of vegetable such as spinach, hundreds of chemical components enter our digestive tract. There, they are further metabolized by the gut microbiome, a unique collection of hundreds of microbial species...

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