A New Platform for Diagnosing Inflammatory Bowel Disease

The gut microbiota is considered a metabolic organ that produces a large number of metabolites (short-chain fatty acids, bile acids, indole derivatives, etc.) that signal through their cognate receptors to regulate host metabolism. Among them, the imbalance of bile acid metabolism is closely related to the occurrence and development of various liver and intestinal diseases, including hepatocellular carcinoma and colorectal cancer. Drugs targeting bile acids are widely used in clinical practice. In the gut, bile acids are susceptible to enzymes produced by bacteria. If converted bile acids are poorly absorbed in the heart, the amount of bile acids excreted may affect the gut microbiota.

Bile salt hydrolase (BSH) mediates the conversion of primary bile acids to secondary bile acids and is involved in lipid metabolism, glucose metabolism, and immune homeostasis processes. Therefore, the bile salt hydrolases (BSH) involved in bile acid metabolism thus play a central role in human health. Still, their function is unclear due to the lack of suitable methods to measure their activity.

Given the unique chemical environment, variable distribution, and highly dynamic nature of the gut microbiota, there has been no way to monitor the activity of the intact gastrointestinal tract noninvasively. Recently, researchers have developed various methods to detect BSH; one of them is a panel of chemical probes. This new platform overcame the difficulty of BSH detection by incorporating proteomics and binding biotin probes or fluorescent probes to accomplish the detection of the test sample. This tool provides scientists with a way to better understand the link between a person's gut health and the origin and nature of the human disease, which could lead to better precision medicine treatments.

The Advantages of this platform include:

• Complex biological mixtures are abled
• Rapid detection of enzyme activity
• Results are visualized

Potential Applications

• Detection of human inflammatory bowel diseases
• Rapid detection of BSH enzyme activity
• Optimizing biomarkers for human inflammatory diseases
• Provide a new method for immunotherapy

Profacgen is a company dedicated to research in the biological field. We have been committed to discovering advanced experimental techniques to provide stronger support for our customers' research. Please do not hesitate to contact us for more details if you are interested in this new method, and we will provide a considerate service for you. At the same time, we also provide other protein interaction detection methods, please move to our website for more details in protein-protein interaction.

Reference

1. Foley MH, O'Flaherty S, Barrangou R, Theriot CM. Bile salt hydrolases: Gatekeepers of bile acid metabolism and host-microbiome crosstalk in the gastrointestinal tract. PLoS Pathog. 2019 Mar 7;15(3):e1007581. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pp.1007581.