Colon Bacteria Need Fiber to Feed Healthy Digestion

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Colon Bacteria Need Fiber to Feed Healthy Digestion

 

 

 

Republished with permission from NutraIngredients.com, March 3, 2004

 

Dietary fiber from fruits and vegetables provides essential food for bacteria in

the colon needed to fight off pathogens, say US researchers, explaining why

fruit and vegetables are so important in protecting against colon disease. The

team from the Medical College of Georgia have identified a transporter in the

colon, called SLC5A8, which plays a role in the final stage of the digestion

process, absorbing the nutrients produced by bacteria living in the organ.

 

In an online accelerated communication in the Journal of Biological Chemistry,

they explain how good bacteria in the colon produce an enzyme that breaks down

glucose found in the cell walls of vegetables, fruits and cereals, and which

cannot be digested in the small intestine. In the oxygen-less environment of the

bacteria-packed colon, bacteria ferment this glucose to use for energy which

also results in the production of short-chain fatty acids, the preferred

nutrients for colon cells.

 

The researchers have found in both animal and human cells that SLC5A8 is a final

piece of the chain, a transporter expressed by colonic cells to absorb the

energy-packed, short-chain fatty acids.

 

" We used to teach that bacteria produced short-chain fatty acids which are used

by colonic cells but it was not known that these cells possessed an efficient

active transport system to absorb these fatty acids, " said Dr Vadivel Ganapathy,

the study's principal author.

 

The finding that SLC5A8 is the transporter helps clarify why fruits and

vegetables are beneficial and why antibiotics, which wipe out good bacteria

along with bad, should only be taken when absolutely necessary as they upset the

model and colonic cells. " We do not make the enzyme to digest cellulose;

bacteria make the enzyme in the colon, " said Dr Ganapathy. " Therefore, you need

to eat dietary fiber to provide the food for bacteria. Otherwise, they are not

going to survive there. Antibiotics can wipe out good bacteria as well, leaving

a void where disease-causing bacteria can grow. "

 

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio reported in 2003 in the

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they had cloned the SLC5A8

transporter from the human colon. While they knew it was a transporter, they did

not know what it transported, but reported instead its function as a tumor

suppressor.

 

" When colon cells become cancerous, this particular transport system gets

silenced, " Dr Ganapathy says.

 

Where the transport system is expressed in the body provides clues of what it

transports, according to the researcher. The Case Western Reserve research told

him the transporter was heavily expressed in the colon, a seemingly odd place

because nutrient transport systems are not typically expressed in the colon

since digestion and absorption take place almost exclusively in the small

intestine.

 

But he also knew that colon cells need short-chain fatty acids to stay healthy.

" Normal colon cells express this transport system so they can make use of the

products made by the bacteria. If these essential nutrients do not come in,

cells become sick, " he said.

 

Colleague Dr Robert G. Martindale, a gastrointestinal surgeon with a special

interest in probiotics, added: " The gut is a huge immune organ; there are more

immune cells in our gut than there are in the rest of the body put together.

This [new] work is showing very nicely that if, in fact, we keep this

short-chain fatty acid transporter healthy, we then can keep the whole immune

system healthy. "

 

Immune cells also have a specific receptor for short-chain fatty acids on the

cell surface, and the Georgia team is pursuing the idea that the SLC5A8

transporter is delivering these fatty acids to immune cells to interact with the

receptors and keep the immune cells vigilant as well.

 

They also want to know what happens to SLC5A8 and the receptor when

inflammation, such as inflammatory bowel disease, occurs. Dr. Ganapathy

hypothesizes that inflammation occurs when something goes awry in the symbiotic

relationship between good bacteria and colon cells.

 

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