Microbial Oncotarget: Bacterial-Produced Butyrate, Chemoprevention and Warburg Effect

Dallas R Donohoe,Scott J Bultman,Kaitlin P Curry

doi:10.18632/oncotarget.915

Abstract

Microbial Oncotarget: Bacterial-Produced Butyrate, Chemoprevention and Warburg Effect

Highlights

The Human Microbiome Project is using nextgeneration sequencing and metagenomics to characterize microbial communities that inhabit our gastrointestinal tract and other body sites [1, 2]
Due to the Warburg effect, cancerous colonocytes become addicted to glucose and undergo high levels of glycolysis with relatively little mitochondrial oxidative metabolism
Butyrate was not metabolized to the same extent in cancerous colonocytes, accumulated in the nucleus, and functioned as a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor to regulate genes that inhibited cell proliferation and promoted apoptosis (Fig. 1B)

Summary

Introduction

The Human Microbiome Project is using nextgeneration sequencing and metagenomics to characterize microbial communities that inhabit our gastrointestinal tract and other body sites [1, 2]. A recent study by Donohoe et al provides considerable mechanistic insight by demonstrating that a fundamental difference in energy metabolism between normal and cancerous colonocytes can explain the butyrate paradox [6]. Normal colonocytes utilize butyrate as their preferred energy source , which as a fatty acid undergoes oxidative metabolism in the mitochondria.

Results

Conclusion