More NEWS: Check out #MVIF@watermicrobe.bsky.social@symbionticism.bsky.social@gibbological.bsky.social@chmoei.bsky.social Ruixin Liu Emad El-Omar
For a pop-sci write up of our work, please see here: gibbons.isbscience.org/news/2024/07...
Everybody poops, but not every day. New research by ISB researchers suggests bowel movement frequency is linked to long-term health.
TLDR: we found that theoretical ecology may be relevant to enteric infections. We identified a new mechanistic driver of alpha diversity variation in the gut: bowel length and Island Biogeography Theory. Finally, if you're short, don't sweat it, just eat your fruits and veggies!
oh, interesting! looking forward to seeing the follow-up work in more complex communities :)
really interesting. kind of scary that the host chooses a less-fermentable diet. makes sense from a satiety/behavior perspective, but definitely pushes mice (and maybe us?) away from the healthier option!
MEDI was a really tricky method to implement, and it took years to get it working well. Hats off to the incredibly talented @cdiener.com for building such a useful tool 🎩🤩
Finally, MEDI could potentially be combined with other data-driven approaches to tracking dietary intake, like amplicon-based methods developed by the David Lab (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...nature.com/articles/s41... ).
We hope this method will be useful, and open up new avenues for tracking human dietary intake. There are several caveats, like the fact that we cannot capture foods that do not have a DNA signature (e.g., processed sugars). See the preprint for more on this point.