2023-06-07 12:48:29
American biologists Jeffrey I. Gordon, Peter Greenberg and Bonnie L. Bassler win the award, which last year recognized the ‘godfathers’ of artificial intelligence
The award Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical ResearchThis year it went to three American biologists who have investigated the microbiota, the microorganisms that inhabit our intestines, as well as the language that bacteria use to process nutrients and their role in infections.
The winners are the Americans Jeffrey I. Gordonbiologist and director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis; Everett Peter Greenberg, microbiologist and professor at the University of Washington; and Bonnie Lynn Basslera molecular biologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The jury justifies the award in its minutes “for their contributions to new approaches that recognize the essential role of microorganism communities in life on Earth, including that of human beings.”
In more detail, the jury points out: “Jeffrey Gordon has pioneered the discovery and understanding of the human microbiome, that is, the immense number and diversity of microorganisms that live in the body, with a essential role in health, including metabolism, immune response, and nutrition. Peter Greenberg and Bonnie Lynn Bassler have unveiled unknown mechanisms of communication between bacteria, which emit chemical signals that modulate their collective behavior. Both discoveries are enabling innovative therapeutic applications and the search for new effective treatments against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”
Jeffrey I. Gordon has been the pioneer in the study of the human microbiomethe set of microorganisms that inhabit our intestine (tens of billions: several times more than the total number of our own cells) and their influence on human health, not only on nutrition, digestion and metabolism (diabetes, obesity, malnutrition ) but also in the neurological and immune development of children and young people.
Gordon used transgenic mice to demonstrate that intestinal epithelial cell differentiation was conditioned by environmental cues and that Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, is responsible for the production of polysaccharides in the cells of the intestine. He thus demonstrated the importance of nutrient exchange relationships between the microbiota and the host. He launched the Human Microbiome Project, which has allowed to estimate in about 10,000 species that make up the microbiota and sequencing the genome of more than a hundred of them so far.
Later he focused on the role of the microbiome in the development of diseases such as obesity and diabetes, offering a new approach in the treatment of malnutrition in children and its consequences in development, which depends not only on diet but also on the acquisition of a healthy microbiome. Therefore, he proposes microbiota transplants as an innovative treatment to improve the nutritional status of populations.
Bonnie Bassler and Everett Peter Greenberg are pioneers in the study of communication between bacteria through the emission of certain substances, and how the formation of large groups generates a different behavior than when they are isolated. This is what is called quorum sensing (a term coined by Greenberg in a 1994 scientific article). Building on some previous publications of the phenomenon, Bassler and Greenberg separately contributed to understanding it and demonstrating its mechanism. Each bacterial species has its own molecule (a language) that it secretes and that They only recognize their own kind.so they know when others are around and tend to form a community (the quorum) that regulates the expression of some genes.
In the 1980s, Greenberg discovered that bioluminescent bacterium Vibrio fischeri only produced light when it formed large groups and that its members coordinated by means of a chemical signal. Bassler studied, from 1990, the phenomenon in bacteria Vibrio harveyi and unravels the molecular mechanisms of quorum sensing.
He also discovered that bacteria can emit and receive other substances to communicate between different species and that there is a universal one (the Esperanto of bacterial languages in his own words). bacterial communication It is important as part of the microbiota of our body and for its role in infections, in which there is a stage of low activity until a large group is formed, as if they were waiting to accumulate forces, and then they carry out a massive attack on the organism. Based on this phenomenon, antagonist molecules of these substances are being developed to interfere with communication as a possible antimicrobial pathway for antibiotic-resistant bacteria, whose efficacy in mice has already been demonstrated in the laboratory.
Jeffrey Gordon won the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in 2019: “We are a wonderful mix of genetic and cellular components of microbes and humans.“, he declared then. “You have to be very humble before all that remains to be learned”, and not be tempted to think that there are microorganisms that make you fat and others that lose weight, the researcher pointed out. The effect of each microbiome is personal, because “the important thing is the interaction” between the microorganisms and the cells of the carrier.
This year’s jury was chaired by Pedro Miguel Echenique Landirbar and included Jess del lamo, Alberto Aparici Benages, Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras, Avelino Corma Cans, Miguel Delibes de Castro, Sandra Myrna Daz, Clara Grima Ruiz, Bernardo Hernndez Gonzlez, Jernimo Lpez Martnez, Inmaculada Martnez Rubio, Amador Menndez Velzquez, Concepcin Alicia Monje Micharet, Gins Morata Prez, Ins Rodrguez Hidalgo, Mara Teresa Telleria Jorge, Mara Vallet Reg, Mara Paz Zorzano Mier and Cristina Garmendia Mendizbal (secretary).
The winning entry was proposed by Philip L. Felgnerone of the fathers of vaccines against covid-19, Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research 2021.
According to the criteria of
The Trust Project
Know more
#Princess #Asturias #Award #Scientific #Technical #Research #translators #intestinal #bacteria