Tag: Peter Turnbaugh

  • Health

    You are what you eat — and how you cook it

    Scientists have recently discovered that different diets — say, high-fat versus low-fat, or plant-based versus animal-based — can rapidly and reproducibly alter the composition and activity of the gut microbiome, where differences in the composition and activity can affect everything from metabolism to immunity to behavior.

    Professor Rachel Carmody
  • Health

    Enzyme interference

    Researchers discovered that Eggerthella lenta — a bacterium found in the guts of more than 30 percent of the population — can metabolize the cardiac drug digoxin in high enough quantities to render it ineffective. Now, a team of researchers has identified the culprit gene that produces the digoxin-metabolizing enzyme.

  • Health

    Your gut’s what you eat, too

    A new Harvard study shows that, in as little as a day, diet can alter the population of microbes in the gut – particularly those that tolerate bile – as well as the types of genes expressed by gut bacteria.

  • Health

    Bacterial blockade

    Harvard researchers have identified a pair of genes that appear to be responsible for allowing a specific strain of bacteria in the human gut to break down Lanoxin — a widely prescribed cardiac drug — into an inactive compound, as well as a possible way to turn the process off.

  • Health

    Major weight loss tied to microbes

    In a study conducted by Harvard and MGH researchers, gut microbes of mice underwent drastic changes following gastric bypass surgery, and transfer of the microbes into sterile mice resulted in rapid weight loss.

  • Health

    Go with your gut

    Peter Turnbaugh and co-authors Corinne Ferrier Maurice and Henry Joseph Haiser show that as drugs are administered, the activity of human gut microbes can change dramatically. Understanding how those changes affect drug chemistry could help researchers to design drugs that work more effectively and antibiotics that more specifically target pathogens.

  • Health

    Life partner

    Researchers in the Harvard lab of Bauer Fellow Peter Turnbaugh are seeking to understand how the microbes that live in our intestines affect the drugs we take and the food we eat.