Rival tribes of bacteria armed with poison darts are fighting it out in your gut, with armies of traitors often winning the day
By Michael Le Page
24 October 2024
The gut microbiome is hugely diverse – and the microorganisms don’t live in harmony
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Your gut is a battleground where rival tribes of bacteria armed with poison darts fight for territory – and these battles are often won by armies of traitors made to switch sides by selfish DNA transferred to them by their enemies.
“The human colon is one of the most dense microbial ecosystems on Earth,” says Laurie Comstock at the University of Chicago in Illinois. There are lots of different species of bacteria, and different strains within species, fighting for the same resources.
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To get the upper hand, many release toxins in an attempt to poison their rivals. Some are armed with an even more extraordinary weapon – dart guns that fire high-speed syringes for injecting poisons directly into other bacteria or larger cells nearby.
“They are a spring-loaded weapon that requires the organisms to be very close,” says Comstock.
The innocuous-sounding name for this kind of dart gun is a type 6 secretory system, or T6SS. A wide range of species are armed with them, and there is a lot of variation in how they work – the darts can contain many different toxins, for instance.