ArticlePLoS computational biology2019
Enchained growth and cluster dislocation: A possible mechanism for microbiota homeostasis.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Immune surveillance and microbial escape in the aging host: Why does the microbiome lose its balance?PLoS biology · 2026Review
- Article
- Vaccine-enhanced competition permits rational bacterial strain replacement in the gut.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Metagenomic immunoglobulin sequencing reveals IgA coating of microbial strains in the healthy human gut.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Residents or Tourists: Is the Lactating Mammary Gland Colonized by Residential Microbiota?Microorganisms · 2024Review
- Alternatives to antibiotics in pig production: looking through the lens of immunophysiology.Stress biology · 2024Review
- Metagenomic Immunoglobulin Sequencing (MIG-Seq) Exposes Patterns of IgA Antibody Binding in the Healthy Human Gut Microbiome.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Alteration of microbiota antibody-mediated immune selection contributes to dysbiosis in inflammatory bowel diseases.EMBO molecular medicine · 2022Article
- Resistance is futile? Mucosal immune mechanisms in the context of microbial ecology and evolution.Mucosal immunology · 2022Review
- The Interplay among Radiation Therapy, Antibiotics and the Microbiota: Impact on Cancer Treatment Outcomes.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Flagella at the Host-Microbe Interface: Key Functions Intersect With Redundant Responses.Frontiers in immunology · 2022Review
- IgA in human health and diseases: Potential regulator of commensal microbiota.Frontiers in immunology · 2022Review
- Immunoglobulin A, an Active Liaison for Host-Microbiota Homeostasis.Microorganisms · 2021Review
- Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels.eLife · 2021Article
- Diversity and dynamism of IgA-microbiota interactions.Nature reviews. Immunology · 2021Review
- Microbiota-antibody interactions that regulate gut homeostasis.Cell host & microbe · 2021Review
- IgA and the intestinal microbiota: the importance of being specific.Mucosal immunology · 2020Review
- Growing, evolving and sticking in a flowing environment: understanding IgA interactions with bacteria in the gut.Immunology · 2020Review
- Sublethal antibiotics collapse gut bacterial populations by enhancing aggregation and expulsion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Immunoglobulin A is a class of antibodies produced by the adaptive immune system and secreted into the gut lumen to fight pathogenic bacteria. We recently demonstrated that the main physical effect of these antibodies is to enchain daughter bacteria, i.e. to cross-link bacteria into clusters as they divide, preventing them from interacting with epithelial cells, thus protecting the host. These links between bacteria may break over time. We study several models using analytical and numerical calculations. We obtain the resulting distribution of chain sizes, that we compare with experimental data. We study the rate of increase in the number of free bacteria as a function of the replication rate of bacteria. Our models show robustly that at higher replication rates, bacteria replicate before the link between daughter bacteria breaks, leading to growing cluster sizes. On the contrary at low growth rates two daughter bacteria have a high probability to break apart. Thus the gut could produce IgA against all the bacteria it has encountered, but the most affected bacteria would be the fast replicating ones, that are more likely to destabilize the microbiota. Linking the effect of the immune effectors (here the clustering) with a property directly relevant to the potential bacterial pathogeneicity (here the replication rate) could avoid to make complex decisions about which bacteria to produce effectors against.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.