A study on gut microbes using a compound light microscope has shown that two common and friendly organisms collude and collaborate to increase the amount of calories from a class of carbohydrates. In previous studies, it was learned that when two prominent microbes derived from humans are allowed to colonize on germ-free mice, fatter mice were produced. This finding, resulting from examinations using a compound light microscope, led to some insights on manipulating gut microbes to gain or lose weight or to acquire some other medical benefits.

Scientists therefore need to know who dwells on our digestive system and how they form alliances with one another for our own benefit and theirs using a compound light microscope. But much has to be learned on how these microbes vary with each individual. A compound light microscope is useful in learning more information about these microbes. In the article, a distinguished university professor, said that we are organisms of not just human cells but also of bacterial cells, and cells of another microscopic domain of life called archaea. These cells, when studied using a compound light microscope, exceeds the number of human cells by ten fold and the genes in this community far exceed our own genes. They become a part of our genetic system by providing us with attributes such as the ability to digest commonly consumed complex sugars. These polysaccharides, as these sugars are called, pass through our small intestines unchanged because we lack to genes to digest them until they reach the colon where bacteroids that ferments and breaks them down to absorb the stored calories.

But this microbe, identified using a compound light microscope, does not work in just a simple partnership with its host because human guts contains many hundreds or thousands of other microbial species doing functions affecting each other besides the host. One interesting study by Buck Samuel, a doctoral student, is that of Metanobrevibacter smithii, an archaeon which was once identified as a premitive form of bacteria and can be seen using a compound light microscope. It has the ability to live in extreme environments where nothing else survive and the ability to consumes hydrogen and other by products of bacterial digestion of dietary polysaccharides.

In his study, Samuel colonized three groups of mice, one with polysaccharide-digesting bacterium B. thetaiotaomicron, the second group with M. smithii, and the third group received both. Dramatically, in the first group, B. thetaiotaomicron shifted its appetite for fructans, commonly found in Western diet and increased its ability to produce energy for itself, and made it available to mouse in forms it can use.  Mice in the third group with both organisms had more fat than the other groups. The second group with M. smithii, composed their digestive efficiency. Whether M. smithii can be manipulated to improve digestive health or even to see the varying levels of M. smithii in obese and lean individuals is only a part of the human gut “microbebiome” project. Article link