If You Eat It or Secrete It, They Will Grow: the Expanding List of Nutrients Utilized by Human Gut Bacteria

Abstract

In order to persist, successful bacterial inhabitants of the human gut need to adapt to changing nutrient conditions, which are influenced by host diet and a variety of other factors. For members of the Bacteroidetes and several other phyla, this has resulted in the diversification of a variety of enzyme-based systems that equip them to sense and utilize carbohydrate-based nutrients from host, diet, and bacterial origins.