Glycome Atlas
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Glycome Atlas
process
Also known as glycan foraging, microbial glycan degradation, carbohydrate foraging
Plain-language answer
Microbial glycan foraging is how gut bacteria feed themselves on sugars, both from the fiber you eat and from the mucus lining of your gut. They carry specialized enzymes that chop these sugar chains into usable pieces.1
What the microbes forage on shapes which species thrive and which helpful compounds, like short-chain fatty acids, they make. When dietary fiber runs low, some microbes graze harder on the protective mucus layer.1
Technical detail
Microbial glycan foraging is the collective degradation of dietary and host glycans by gut bacteria using carbohydrate-active enzymes, driving cross-feeding networks, short-chain fatty acid production, and, under fiber scarcity, increased mucin degradation.1
Specialist taxa encode large repertoires of glycoside hydrolases, polysaccharide lyases, and sulfatases organized to sense, import, and depolymerize specific glycan substrates.1
Fiber-rich diets favor foraging on dietary polysaccharides, whereas fiber deprivation can promote reliance on host mucin glycans and erosion of the mucus barrier.12
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References