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Microbes for malnutrition

How the microbiome could help solve malnutrition

March 24, 2016 7:00 AM UTC

A trio of studies published in February point to the microbiome's role in infant malnutrition, and the potential to offset its impact by using specific microbes or sugars to promote healthy microbial communities. Researchers identified two bacterial species that could prevent stunted growth due to malnutrition, and a sugar derived from cow's milk that modified the microbiome.

A group from Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), led by Jeffrey Gordon, authored two of the studies, in which it used the microbiomes of healthy and malnourished Malawian infants to create mouse models that mimicked the makeup of the children's gut. The papers were published in February in the journals Cell and Science...