Analytic Approach Sheds Light on Microbial Growth in “Dark Place” of the Gut

Distributed cell division counting (DCDC), an analytic tool developed using synthetic biology, enables researchers to tag cells of Escherichia coli, follow their passage through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract of a mouse—or, presumably, a human—as they divide, and determine bacterial cell population dynamics within this otherwise inaccessible anatomic system, according to Cameron Myhrvold, Pamela Silver, and their collaborators at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass. This analytic approach can be adapted to “study microbial growth during infection, gut dysbiosis, antibiotic therapy, or other situations relevant to human health,” they note. Details appeared 30 November 2015 in Nature Communications (doi:10.1038/ncomms10039).