Penetrability of the inner mucus layer: who is out there?

Li, Hai; Limenitakis, Julien Periclis Jean; Ganal, Stephanie; Macpherson, Andrew (2015). Penetrability of the inner mucus layer: who is out there? EMBO reports, 16(2), pp. 127-129. Nature Publishing Group 10.15252/embr.201439943

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Large numbers of microorganisms colonise
the skin and mucous membranes of
animals, with their highest density in the
lower gastrointestinal tract. The impact
of these microbes on the host can be
demonstrated by comparing animals
(usually mice) housed under germ-free
conditions, or colonised with different
compositions of microbes. Inbreeding and
embryo manipulation programs have
generated a wide variety of mouse
strains with a fixed germ-line (isogenic)
and hygiene comparisons robustly show
remarkably strong interactions between
the microbiota and the host, which can
be summarised in three axioms. (I) Live
microbes are largely confined to their
spaces at body surfaces, provided the
animal is not suffering from an infection.
(II) There is promiscuous molecular
exchange throughout the host and its
microbiota in both directions [1]. (III)
Every host organ system is profoundly
shaped by the presence of body surface
microbes. It follows that one must draw
a line between live microbial and host
“spaces” (I) to understand the crosstalk
(II and III) at this interesting interface of
the host-microbial superorganism. Of
course, since microbes can adapt to very
different niches, there has to be more
than one line. In this issue of EMBO
Reports, Johansson and colleagues have
studied mucus, which is the main physical
frontier for most microbes in the
intestinal tract: they report how different
non-pathogenic microbiota compositions
affect its permeability and the functional
protection of the epithelial surface [2].

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