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How does the microbiota modulate ageing? In a recent Faculty Review, Dario Riccardo Valenzano and his co-author Jens Seidel, explore whether our microbiota play a causal role in the ageing process and the possible mechanisms by which it could do so. 

The answer to anti-ageing could lie in our gut, according to research published in F1000Research. The largest amount of microbiota live in the gut, compared to all other organs, and it is this community that could determine our health and life span, since changes in the diversity and richness of the bacterial species residing in the gut could increase our risk of infection and frailty as we age.

Lead author of the review, Dario Riccardo Valenzano, a researcher from Max-Planck Institute, Germany, says “The microbiota is a sort of dynamic and portable pharmacy. Dramatic changes occur in the gut microbiota, where the composition will vary at specific stages of life, including birth, adulthood and old age.

“The microbiota is a sort of dynamic and portable pharmacy.” Dario Riccardo Valenzano

During childhood, the microbiota community becomes richer and more stable, and reaches a functionally stable composition in adulthood, but several factors, including disease, diet, antibiotics and general drug use modulate the microbiota.

“Human centenarians and ultra-centenarians are characterised by a microbiota enriched with bacteria that are beneficial for our health”, says Valenzano who is investigating the role our gut microbiota plays in ageing and life span.

It is still unclear how the gut microbiota modulates ageing and how we can harness the molecular mechanisms, but one possibility we need to test is the “anti-ageing” affect young-associated microbiota (the community present in childhood) could have an in older individuals.

“At the beginning of a new era of interventions.” Dario Riccardo Valenzano

“This is still in its infancy, and more research is needed in mice and humans to explore all the promising medical potentials, e.g. assessing disease risk. We do not yet know whether specific properties of the microbiota could be used as bona fide biomarkers of host health and whether in the future we will be able to assess disease risk or past medical events by monitoring the gut microbiota.”

To explore the functional connection between ageing and microbiota, Valenzano and his team are looking for answers in killifish. It is an ideal model organism for this field of research because killifish have a rich microbiota, consisting of hundreds of different bacterial species, similar in complexity to mice and humans. The composition of the microbiota community also undergoes changes with age, like us humans, becoming less species-rich and potentially more pathogenic.

In the future, bacteria could in theory be tailored to individuals’ needs, engineered to synthesize drugs and metabolites, or be used to complement age-dependent deficits in our bodies enzyme activity. Valenzano says, “I think we are at the beginning of a new era of interventions that could use the microbiota as a highly-versatile and accessible metabolic organ.”