Microbes help to battle infections

An artist’s representation of gut microbes promoting hematopoiesis.

Credit: Arya Khosravi and Wesley McBride/Caltech

When we think about microbes or even hear about them everyone jumps to the bad ones immediately and we all of the sudden relate each microbe to something bad rather than good, in fact anytime I hear about microbes I do that very exact thing… Upon my browsing and snooping around I was able to find a nice little article about some of the good microbes contribute to our bodies. In this article you read about Caltech professor of biology and biological engineering Sarkis Mazmanian, where his team are most interested in most bacteria and especially the ones already inside our bodies that actually keep us healthy. In a test done in March 12 the professor studied germ-free mice and healthy to study the gut bacteria and the effect it has on the mice immune system. To see how the mice would react to an infectious disease to them. In the healthy mouse they were able to bounce back after being infected, but when the germ-free mouse was infected due to the lack of immune cells the infection seems to be nearly fatal to the mouse until the mouse was introduced to normal gut microbes. Now after reading this study I have come to realize that if we don’t have our microbes in our stomachs or lack of microbes we have a lower immune cell count then that of a healthy human which is quite unfortunate.

Cite:

California Institute of Technology. "Microbes help to battle infection: Gut microbes help develop immune cells, study finds." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 March 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140312132632.htm>.