Resumen de Bacteria to turn your faeces blue if you're ill
Many gut disorders are diagnosed by putting a camera on a thin flexible tube up the rectum. An alternative could be to measure chemicals in the gut that are linked to disease. Pamela Silver of Harvard Medical School in Boston and her colleagues did this in mice using a harmless strain of E coli bacteria. The team gave the bacteria genes that are sensitive to a chemical called tetrathionate, which is seen in higher levels in the guts of people with ulcerative colitis. When the bacteria come across tetrathionate, they switch on a gene to make an enzyme, which is passed in feces along with the bacteria. The enzyme can then be identified in lab tests, in which it changes color
