After more than one and a half century, i.e. since Louis Pasteur work on microbes, fermentation, and diseases, biological science has made a giant step in bacteria knowledge. Thanks to an ultra-powerful "microscope", i.e. ultra-fast DNA sequencing, scientists have been able to read and group within a catalog over the last decade, the gene code of bacteria, i.e. the metagenome at the surface of our epithelia. More recently, live bacteria within adipose tissue, defining a tissue microbiota, as well as bacterial fragments such as DNA within the liver, the brain and the blood have been identified. Metagenomic analyses from large cohorts of patients have uncovered tight correlations between bacterial genes within our intestine and mouth and diseases such as metabolic diseases, diabetes, obesity, some liver diseases, kidney and heart failure as well as vascular diseases. Some causal mechanisms have been proposed in rodents and can set the soil for novel therapeutic strategies that could interfere with both the microbes and the corresponding host targets.
© 2016 médecine/sciences – Inserm.