Gabriel Leventhal
@gaberoo.bsky.social
1K followers 920 following 23 posts
Microbial evolutionary ecologist CSO of pharmabiome.com
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gaberoo.bsky.social
Would be great to be added, thanks
Reposted by Gabriel Leventhal
gregmedlock.bsky.social
I’m creating a drug development starter pack, reach out to join or suggest additions: go.bsky.app/B2pzQm2
gaberoo.bsky.social
I also enjoyed the positive reaction in the room at #cshlmbiome to our "succinotypes", recently published in BMC Microbiome from the pharmabiome.com team (doi.org/10.1186/s401...). The bimodal partitioning of the succinate consumer guild never ceases to amaze me. Summary: bsky.app/profile/gabe...
Histogram showing the distribution of the relative abundances ratio of Dialister to Phascolarctobacterium. The distribution is strongly bimodal, with most of the probablility mass at either 0 or 1.
gaberoo.bsky.social
What pleasure to participate at #cshlmbiome last week! The science was really excellent—deep thinkers that are going after mechanisms in microbiomes and not just descriptive associations. It's what we need to move the translational field forward.
Reposted by Gabriel Leventhal
evolvedbiofilm.bsky.social
Metabolic exchanges are ubiquitous in natural microbial communities

Nature Microbiology perspective by @kostchristian.bsky.social et al @sarilog.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
gaberoo.bsky.social
Totally 🙃 thanks for commenting!
gaberoo.bsky.social
Interesting… so that would be acting in the opposite direction (with respect to succinate concentrations) to e.g. doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109521
gaberoo.bsky.social
Hmmm… We show that both Phascolarctobacterium and Dialister consume succinate, but that (1) Dialister is slower and that (2) IBD patients are more likely to have Dialister compared to Phasco. How do you think that might influence mucosal healing?
gaberoo.bsky.social
In summary: Succinotypes stratify human gut microbiomes based on rate of succinate consumption, setting a mechanistic basis for a functional microbiome biomarker and therapeutic target. pharmabiome.com doi.org/10.1101/2023...
gaberoo.bsky.social
Indeed, we looked at the association of succinotypes with different diseases and found that IBD patients are significantly more likely to have a D-succinotype compared to a P-type.
gaberoo.bsky.social
Finally, because succinate accumulation is implicated in disease—in particular IBD (e.g. doi.org/10.1007/s111... ) we hypothesized that this difference in consumption rate might provide a mechanistic link between microbiome function and disease pathophysiology.
gaberoo.bsky.social
Going back to the consumption rate differences, we expected D succinotype microbiomes to consume succinate more slowly than P succinotypes, and amazingly D-types had higher fecal succinate concentrations than P-types!
gaberoo.bsky.social
Because of this mutual exclusivity, we decided classify human gut microbiomes into either D- or P-succinotypes, which to our understanding is a rare example of a classification based on function rather than just statistical patterns.
gaberoo.bsky.social
If this grouping were relevant, we expected Phascolarctobacterium and Dialister to be anticorrelated across human gut microbiomes. This turned out to be clearly the case, with the two genera mutually exclusive in the vast majority of any fecal samples we could get our hands on.
gaberoo.bsky.social
We thus supposed that Phascolarctobacterium and Dialister would be the relevant succinate consumers in actual gut environments (where alternative nutrient sources should be plentiful), forming a two-taxon functional group.
gaberoo.bsky.social
Interestingly, while Phascolarctobacterium and Dialister directly consumed the supplied succinate, Flavonifractor had diauxic consumption, suggesting it had a preference for any other nutrients in the base medium over succinate.
gaberoo.bsky.social
We thus hypothesized that these three bacteria are the relevant succinate consumers, and that differences in their individual consumption rates resulted in differences in the whole-community consumption rates, which turned out to be the case!
gaberoo.bsky.social
We discovered these using our NicheMap approach doi.org/10.1101/2023..., where we observed that fecal microbiomes differ in terms of the rate at which they consumed succinate, and this rate correlated with three different bacterial genera: Phascolarctobacterium, Dialister, and Flavonifractor.
gaberoo.bsky.social
I'm excited to share the most recent work from the pharmabiome.com team, introducing the notion of 'succinotypes' in human gut microbiota. These correspond to the identity of the bacterial taxon that occupies the succinate consumption niche.
Stratification of human gut microbiomes by succinotype is associated with inflammatory bowel disease...
bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution
doi.org
gaberoo.bsky.social
So sock-dogs per second? Sounds like a measure of knitting speed. Totally understandable, very easy to confuse knitting with space travel.