Are We What We Eat?

Are we what we eat? Or, to ask a simpler question, “can food affect our behavior?” Naturally, being hungry can increase certain behaviors to raise the odds of finding food, and therefore survival. A component of how food affects behavior may be through gut microbes. ⁣
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A collaborative effort went about trying to understand how movement is related to specific gut bacteria in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) . (While the use of bugs to understand mammalian neurobiology may seem preposterous, fruit flies provide a unique opportunity to understand basic underlying mechanisms of behavior. Many organisms, from flies to mice to humans, have nervous systems that operate under similar principles, making small and cheap organisms like flies ideal for conducting basic research.) The research led by Dr. Catherine Schretter found that when flies were raised in the absence of gut bacteria, they walked faster and longer compared to flies raised with gut bacteria. A similar behavior was seen when flies were treated with antibiotics that cleansed their gut microbes. This is interesting because it shows evidence of gut microbes influencing movement behaviors, which could potentially be inferred with other more complex actions. The flies’ gut microbe community includes up to 20 bacterial species, but only two are dominant. Of these two, introducing one (Lactobacillus brevis) to flies raised without gut bacteria reduced their movement to normal range. ⁣
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Thus, depleting gut microbe leads to hyperactivity in flies. This increase in behavior is through to relate to exploratory behavior to seek food and replenish their nutrients. Previous research has linked neurological disorders with alterations in gut microbe as well as gut microbe influencing neurological development . This research from Dr. Sarkis K. Mazmanian’s laboratory is yet another example highlighting a widely underappreciated integration between the gut and nervous system (the gut-brain axis). ⁣
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Reference: PMID: 30425356⁣

Originally posted on Instagram January 8, 2019