1. NEWS Jiao Tong University’s Shanghai Center for
Systems Biomedicine, Zhao oversees several
My Microbiome and Me clinical studies that look at the role of the
microbiome in diabetes, obesity, and liver
Zhao Liping combines traditional Chinese medicine and studies of gut microbes function. But his work remains grounded in
to understand and fight obesity his personal story—which friends say reflects
a willingness to explore uncharted territory
SHANGHAI, CHINA— In some ways it’s a old with flat-top hair and a square jaw— through raw trial and error. “As a scientist,”
familiar story. In 1987, Zhao Liping mar- has become an unlikely spokesperson for a he says, “you should work on questions for
ried Ji Liuying, a college classmate. Within burgeoning field. In 2010, he presented his which there is very little evidence but that you
2 years, they had a daughter and Zhao fin- weight-loss story at the Human Microbiome believe are important.”
ished his Ph.D. Under new pressure and eat- Project meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, Uncertainty about cause and effect is
ing richly—Ji is a good cook—the micro- at the invitation of George Weinstock of what plagues the field right now. It is difficult
biologist put on weight. By 1990, when he Washington University in St. Louis. Gordon’s to prove, for example, that F. prausnitzii
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on September 25, 2012
started an environmental micro- facilitated Zhao’s slimming and didn’t just
biology lab at Shanxi Academy show up once his gut was healthy. “The list of
of Agricultural Sciences in Tai- the diseases that the microbiome may play a
yuan, China, Zhao had grown role in is just growing and growing,” says Lita
from 60 to 80 kilograms. Later, Proctor, director of the U.S. National Institutes
on a postdoctoral fellowship at of Health’s Human Microbiome Project in
Cornell University, he put on Bethesda, Maryland. “But the problem is that
another 10 kilograms. By the we’re only able to look at associations of the
time he returned to China in microbiome with disease and aren’t yet able
1995, his waist measured a cor- to conduct cause-and-effect studies. What
pulent 110 centimeters and his we’re witnessing is a very young field trying
health was poor. to figure out ‘Okay, what’s the right way to
But in 2004, he read a approach [these] data?’ ”
paper that eventually changed For Zhao, the way involves transferring his
the shape of his career—and weight-loss program to hundreds of human
his body. Jeffrey I. Gordon, a subjects and drawing on animal studies to
microbiologist at Washington decide what metabolic parameters to monitor
University School of Medicine in people. While his ultimate
in St. Louis, Missouri, and goal is to establish a molecular
colleagues showed a link pathway connecting the micro-
between obesity and gut biota to obesity, his e-mail
microbiota in mice (Science, signature reads: “EAT RIGHT,
29 May 2009, p. 1136). Zhao KEEP FIT, LIVE LONG, DIE
was curious whether that link QUICK.”
extended to himself and decided The science of shrinking. Microbiologist
to find out. In 2006, he adopted a Zhao Liping, shown here before and after a Faith in traditional medicine
regimen involving Chinese yam change in diet, thinks he lost 20 kilograms by Zhao grew up in a small farming
and bitter melon—fermented regulating his gut microbiota. town in Shanxi Province. Like
prebiotic foods that are believed most Chinese born on the eve of
to change the growth of bacteria in the research had set off a the Cultural Revolution, he and
digestive system—and monitored not just flurry of new studies, but his two younger brothers had a
his weight loss but also the microbes in his Weinstock says scientists simple upbringing. His father
gut. When he combined these prebiotics had reached something was a high school teacher and
with a diet based on whole grains, he lost of an impasse. The “field his mother worked in a textile
20 kilograms in 2 years. His blood pressure, had been standardized to factory. Both of his parents were
heart rate, and cholesterol level came down. some extent by the early firm believers in traditional rem-
CREDITS: COURTESY OF ZHAO LIPING (2)
Faecalibacterium prausnitzii—a bacterium researchers following the edies. Zhao remembers watching
with anti-inflammatory properties— same path,” Weinstock says, and Zhao’s his father try to fight a hepatitis B infection by
flourished, increasing from an undetectable willingness to dive in and experiment on drinking a pungent, murky herbal concoction
percentage to 14.5% of his total gut bacteria. himself “brought a breath of fresh air.” Even twice a day.
The changes persuaded him to focus on the more refreshing was that Zhao presented his A good student, Zhao earned a Ph.D. in
microbiome’s role in his transformation. He findings in a “detached, agnostic, scientific molecular plant pathology from Nanjing
started with mice but has since expanded his way,” Weinstock adds. “He was not religious Agricultural University. When he returned
research to humans. about it at all.” to Shanxi to start his lab, he focused on using
Zhao—now a slim, soft-spoken 49-year- Now associate director of Shanghai beneficial bacteria to rein in plant pathogens.
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3. sequence of changes occurs in an animal’s Beijing is an outspoken critic of what he looking forward to seeing results from Zhao’s
gut after consuming a high-fat diet. Bad describes as overblown claims surrounding clinical studies when they’re published.
bacteria increase, the gut barrier becomes Chinese medicine, which he dismisses as “Other studies of diet and the microbiome
more permeable, and toxins increase in the “just herbs.” But he says Zhao’s research with fewer participants have yielded valuable
bloodstream. The spike in toxins, in turn, is encouraging. He cites a study in Beijing and statistically significant results,” he says.
triggers inflammation, which prompts a fall in focused on gut microbiota and diabetes in Large clinical studies involving prebiotics
the host’s metabolism. Zhao now hopes to see which Zhao and colleagues are looking for like those Zhao runs may be easier to carry
the reverse in his human subjects as they adopt signature bacterial species connected to out in China. At a bustling vegetarian
healthier diets. “All these markers should diabetes in humans. “He is headed in the restaurant in downtown Shanghai one night,
show expected changes,” he says. right direction,” Zhu says. Zhao feasts on seaweed, ginkgo, bamboo,
Zhu Baoli of the Chinese Academy of Rob Knight, a microbiologist at the Chinese kale, and Chinese yam. Chinese
Sciences’s Institute of Microbiology in University of Colorado, Boulder, says he is volunteers don’t blink when asked to eat such
plants, he says. “They look at the list we give
them and say, ‘Oh, this is food. No problem.’
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Pigs as Stand-Ins for Microbiome Studies ” And because many of the substances are not
yet accepted as food or medicines in
SHANGHAI, CHINA—The Chinese use pigs for Europe and North America, he adds,
just about everything, from processing waste to “it would take years to get permission
enriching the dinner table. Now they are testing to do clinical trials.”
piglets as a new model for human microbiome But Zhao has his sights set beyond
research. The past decade has seen an exponen- Asia, predicting this work will be more
tial rise in interest in how the microbes living fruitful than genome studies in leading
in and on the human body affect health (see to antiobesity drugs. Weinstock agrees
p. 1246). Studies often involve germ-free mice, that the end goal of Zhao’s studies is to
but rodents have a very different physiology and find active ingredients, not prove “that
gut microbiota than humans. Pigs, by contrast, you can only treat people with the
have an anatomy and immune system closer to fungus that grows in the dung of some
those of people—along with an omnivorous beetles.” In Zhao’s lab, he says, “it’s
diet and a similar digestive tract. Western reductionist science meets
For research published in 2007, Shang- traditional Chinese medicine.”
hai Jiao Tong University microbiologist Zhao One promising compound Zhao
Liping led a team that inoculated 28 germ-free and colleagues are looking into is
piglets with the diluted excrement of a healthy berberine, the major pharmacological
10-year-old boy to see whether the boy’s gut component of the Chinese herb Coptis
microbiota would thrive in the piglets’ guts. chinensis, or huanglian. They have
That happened with two groups of bacteria found that when rats were given a
important to a healthy human gut, Bifidobac- high-fat diet together with berberine,
terium and Bacteroides. More importantly, the rodents didn’t develop obesity or
when the researchers analyzed the piglets’ gut insulin resistance—and in their guts,
microbiota 12 days later and compared it with populations of known pathogens
that of the human donor, conventionally raised decreased while those of known
piglets, and unrelated humans, the microbiota Whole hog. Humanized piglets show promise for beneficial bacteria increased. Other
most closely resembled that of the donor— microbiome research. gut species that changed in abundance
suggesting that it is possible to establish a haven’t yet been studied, and it’s not known
human microbiome in piglets while maintaining their health and immunity. whether they are linked to good or bad health.
Piglets with human gut flora have “great potential” for use in microbiome research, Zhao But Zhao is quick to acknowledge that this
says. Sharon Donovan, a pediatric health researcher at the University of Illinois, Urbana- work is not going to produce a panacea. And,
Champaign, agrees: “The piglet is an exceptional model for the human infant in terms of gastro- he adds, “we need to do a lot more work
intestinal, immune, and cognitive development.” to understand how [berberine] will affect
CREDIT: PHOTO PROVIDED BY XIAOYAN PANG
Several obstacles remain. Much less is known about pig genetics, so linking pig genes to the nutrition and metabolism.”
microbiome will be a challenge. Also, piglets are relatively expensive—about $120 apiece in If Zhao does one day prove a link
China—and, like other animals, not always receptive to human microbiota. In another study by between gut microbiota and health, it will
the Shanghai Jiao Tong scientists, seven out of 24 human-flora–associated piglets died because be bittersweet. His father, who suffers from
the bacteria they received from an otherwise healthy human donor’s stool contained a strain of inflammation and lingering effects from his
pneumonia-causing bacteria, which scientists had missed. Nonetheless, says Imperial College strokes, is in his last days, and Zhao has spent
London systems biologist Jeremy Nicholson, pigs inoculated with human microbiota get “closer much of the past few months at his bedside. “I
to an animal model of human overall system behavior” than other animals. Humanized pigs, he wish I had done this research 10 years ago,” he
adds, could be “the best thing you could do for human drug testing.” –M.H. says. “I could have helped him.”
–MARA HVISTENDAHL
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