Common Fungus in the Human Gut May Help Control Fatty-Liver Disease
- Jamie Ryding
- May 16
- 1 min read
An article was published recently about the work of a research team at Peking University, led by Prof. Changtao Jiang, published recently in Science that points to the potential effect of a fungus commonly found in the human gut microbiome in controlling progression of metabolic-dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD), a serious condition that affects 1 in 4 adults.
The comprehensive research program involved a novel isolation method to recover over 2000 fungi from fecal samples, discovering that Fusarium foetens was a both a common component and could alone colonize the gut of germ-free mice from a single inoculation.
More interestingly, this isolate was found to control progression of MAFLD in mice prone to the condition, further showing that a metabolite from the fungus (FF-C1) could directly bind a human enzyme (CerS6) linked to MAFLD via the production of ceramides. Mice with deletion mutations in CerS6 showed no effect of F. foetens on control of MAFLD, furthering the connection.
As well as indicating potential therapies for MAFLD, the work highlights the need to understand the involvement of hard-to-culture fungi in the behavior of the human gut microbiome and host-interactions.
The news article is here:
'Truly miraculous': Common gut microbe shows promise as fatty liver disease treatment | Live Science
and the link to the Science abstract is here:
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