Abstract
Gut Microbiota It is vital to human well-being that our gut microbiota can be distinguished from harmful, but often very similar, organisms. Cullen et al. begin to analyze how one dominant symbiont, Bacteroidetes thetaiotaomicron , does this. Our guts release potent antimicrobial peptides when we become infected with pathogenic bacteria such as salmonella, but these symbionts make an outer lipopolysaccharide coat that differs from those of pathogens by only one phosphate molecule. Enzymatic removal of this group is enough to confer resistance to the host's immune response and allow the symbionts to escape damage. Science , this issue p. [170][1] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1260580
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