Researchers from Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California (UC) San Diego have discovered thousands of previously unknown bile acids, a type of molecule used by our gut microbiome to communicate with the rest of the body. The findings can build a better understanding of our gut microbiome and may lead to the development of therapeutics for diseases that are related to the gut microbiome such as type 2 diabetes, intestinal bowel diseases, and more.
The findings are published in Cell in an article titled, “The underappreciated diversity of bile acid modifications.”
“The repertoire of modifications to bile acids and related steroidal lipids by host and microbial metabolism remains incompletely characterized,” the researchers wrote. “To address this knowledge gap, we created a reusable resource of tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) spectra by filtering 1.2 billion publicly available MS/MS spectra for bile-acid-selective ion patterns.”
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