MicrobiotaMi Comment 05_21
by Stefania Blasa
The importance of diet in brain health and neurological function has gained increasing interest in the last years. Dietary factors are well known to influence the composition of gut microbiota, which regulates several brain functions through the gut microbiota-brain axis and whose imbalance lead to …
MicrobiotaMi Comment 02_21
by Giulia Colombo
Teichman et al.’s recent review deals with the interactions between the microbiota-gut-brain axis and circadian rhythmicity, a topic that reminds us how reductive it is to think about ourselves as lonely bodies: we are more similar to small-scale ecosystems, instead, for our microbiota partners…
MicrobiotaMi Comment 01_21
by Stefania Blasa
All animals have developed a strict association with microbial communities during the evolution. This collection of microorganisms, termed the microbiota, is particularly abundant in the gastrointestinal tract and can regulate the function of our metabolism, immune system and even the development of the nervous system. Gut microbiota can influence the brain …
MicrobiotaMi Comment 03_20
by Roberto Ferrarese
One of the most longstanding and unresolved problems in radiotherapy is radiation injury: after partial or total body exposure to ionizing radiation, an acute radiation syndrome or sickness (ARS) may occur, leading to poor hematopoietic recovery and injury to gastrointestinal tract. Although some previous studies showed the …
MicrobiotaMi Comment 02_20
by Benedetta Sposito
Type I Interferons (IFN-I) represent one of the first lines of defense against viral infections. They are rapidly upregulated by almost every cell in the body upon stimulation of different pattern recognition receptors. However, low levels of IFN-I are constitutively expressed and play homeostatic functions. The cellular sources and the stimuli that regulate IFN-I induction in the absence of infection are still under study.
MicrobiotaMi Comment 01_20
by Marco Tonelli
It is well known that human beings had to genetically adapt themselves to the different local conditions across the entire world: in particular they had to adapt to different climates, diets and pathogens that can be encountered during lifetime. As an example, it is very clear the important role of hypoxia-inducible facto 2-alpha (encoded by EPAS1) for people who live in high altitudes, or even the beta-globin gene haplotypes …