Bacteria mediated juvenile host growth promotion during chronic undernutrition and standard diet regime

(Vliv bakterií a mikrobiomu na dynamiku růstu mladého hostitele za podmínek chronické podvýživy a při normální dietě)

Previously, we have shown that microbiota is necessary to sustain optimal weight gain and linear growth of infant mice when fed a standard diet or a nutritionally depleted isocaloric diet (Schwarzer et al., Science 2016). Using monocolonized mouse model we showed that lactobacilli previously selected in Drosophila model of chronic undernutrition for their growth promoting capabilities were sufficient to increase linear growth of mice in a strain-dependent manner and recapitulated the whole microbiota's effect on growth. On the molecular level, we found that intestinal microbiota and Lactobacillus plantarum interact with the hormonal somatotropic axis (GH/IGF-1) activity to drive systemic growth. This exciting finding implies that there might be evolutionary conserved effects of Lactobacillus plantarum strains to promote juvenile growth. We are further dissecting the molecular mechanism behind the bacteria driven host growth promotion with the ultimate goal to improve the current treatment of undernutrition in human population. Further reading (Schwarzer et al., 2018; Schwarzer 2018; Poinsot et al., 2018).

Integrative Physiology of Gnotobionts research group is funded by grants from Czech Grant Agency and EMBO Installation grant.

Location Young and dynamic team of Martin Schwarzer’s group at Laboratory of Gnotobiology, Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Doly 183, Nový Hrádek, 54922 (Doctoral studies of Immunology at Charles University in Prague)

Deadline for applications 31. 3. 2020

Contact schwarzer@biomed.cas.cz