Glucuronides in the gut: Sugar-driven symbioses between microbe and host
- From the Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3290
- ↵1 To whom correspondence should be addressed: Campus Box 3290, Dept. of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3290. E-mail: redinbo{at}unc.edu.
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Edited by Ruma Banerjee
Abstract
The intestinal milieu is astonishingly complex and home to a constantly changing mixture of small and large molecules, along with an abundance of bacteria, viral particles, and eukaryotic cells. Such complexity makes it difficult to develop testable molecular hypotheses regarding host-microbe interactions. Fortunately, mammals and their associated gastrointestinal (GI) microbes contain complementary systems that are ideally suited for mechanistic studies. Mammalian systems inactivate endobiotic and xenobiotic compounds by linking them to a glucuronic acid sugar for GI excretion. In the GI tract, the microbiota express β-glucuronidase enzymes that remove the glucuronic acid as a carbon source, effectively reversing the actions of mammalian inactivation. Thus, by probing the actions of microbial β-glucuronidases, and by understanding which substrate glucuronides they process, molecular insights into mammalian-microbial symbioses may be revealed amid the complexity of the intestinal tract. Here, we focus on glucuronides in the gut and the microbial proteins that process them.
- bacterial metabolism
- drug metabolism
- microbiome
- symbiosis
- xenobiotic
- endobiotic
- enterohepatic circulation
Footnotes
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This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grants CA207416 and CA098468 and Cellular and Molecular Biophysics Program of University of North Carolina Grant 5T32GM008570-20. This is the fourth article in the Host-Microbiome metabolic interplay Minireview series. The authors of this publication have equity ownership (M. R. R.) or are inventors of technologies (S. J. P. and M. R. R.) related to Symberix, Inc., a pharmaceutical company creating microbiome-targeted therapeutics. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
- © 2017 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.
