ENGINEERING PROBIOTICS TO PRODUCE SHORT CHAIN FATTY ACIDS FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF METABOLIC SYNDROME

Abstract

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of obesity-related metabolic conditions that can lead to life-threatening diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. One promising approach to address the issue of metabolic syndrome is the incorporation of modified bacteria to enhance the host metabolic processes with microbial-produced therapeutic compounds. Here, we genetically modified probiotics to secrete butyrate in order to alleviate metabolic syndrome and investigated its effects on two mediators employed by the microbes to regulate host metabolic processes. The recombinant probiotics exhibited beneficial effects on the two mediators, an insulin-inducing hormone and the endocannabinoid system employed by the gut microbes to regulate host glucose homeostasis and adipose tissue metabolism, respectively. Therefore, this suggests potential therapeutic functions of the engineered probiotics to re-establish homeostatic metabolic processes and, thus, to alleviate the metabolic syndrome.