ArticleNature microbiology2022
A biosynthetic pathway for the selective sulfonation of steroidal metabolites by human gut bacteria.
Article in Nature microbiology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers.
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52 citing papers in PubMed, 84 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Comparative Metabolomics Reveals the Production of Sulfated Metabolites by Human Gut Bacteria.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- Sulfated bile acid produced by a human gut commensal alleviates paediatric sepsis in mice.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- A sulfated bile acid from microbes calms sepsis.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Activity-guided substructure prioritization accelerates discovery of gut microbiota-derived immune-regulating metabolites.Nature communications · 2026Article
- SpiR is a gut microbial enzyme that drives cholesterol conversion.Nature communications · 2026Article
- [Research progress on the multidimensional regulation of gut microbiota on metabolism, immunity, and inflammatory response in metabolic associated fatty liver disease].Zhonghua gan zang bing za zhi = Zhonghua ganzangbing zazhi = Chinese journal of hepatology · 2026Review
- Gut microbiota-dependent 24-hydroxycholesterol metabolism contributes to capsaicin-induced amelioration of Alzheimer's disease-like pathology in mice.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Microbial transformation of secondary bile acids: roles in gut ecology and autoimmune diseases.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- A sulfotransferase from a gut microbe acts on diverse phenolic sulfate compounds, including acetaminophen sulfate.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
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- Gut microbiota gate host exposure to cholinesterase inhibitors from dietary Solanums.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Microbial bile acid modifications: current understandings, key problems, and future perspectives.Science China. Life sciences · 2025Review
- Emerging strategies to enhance microbial natural product-based drug discovery.Current opinion in biotechnology · 2025Review
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- A Machine Learning Model for the Proteome-Wide Prediction of Lipid-Interacting Proteins.Journal of chemical information and modeling · 2025Article
- Gut microbiota-associated non-cholesterol sterol dysregulation modulates immune reconstitution during antiretroviral therapy in people living with HIV.Microbiology spectrum · 2025Article
- Leveraging chemical synthesis to discover metabolites from the gut microbiome.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
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14 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
Members of the human gut microbiome enzymatically process many bioactive molecules in the gastrointestinal tract. Most gut bacterial modifications characterized so far are hydrolytic or reductive in nature. Here we report that abundant human gut bacteria from the phylum Bacteroidetes perform conjugative modifications by selectively sulfonating steroidal metabolites. While sulfonation is a ubiquitous biochemical modification, this activity has not yet been characterized in gut microbes. Using genetic and biochemical approaches, we identify a widespread biosynthetic gene cluster that encodes both a sulfotransferase (BtSULT, BT0416) and enzymes that synthesize the sulfonate donor adenosine 3'-phosphate-5'-phosphosulfate (PAPS), including an APS kinase (CysC, BT0413) and an ATP sulfurylase (CysD and CysN, BT0414-BT0415). BtSULT selectively sulfonates steroidal metabolites with a flat A/B ring fusion, including cholesterol. Germ-free mice monocolonized with Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron ΔBT0416 exhibited reduced gastrointestinal levels of cholesterol sulfate (Ch-S) compared with wild-type B. thetaiotaomicron-colonized mice. The presence of BtSULT and BtSULT homologues in bacteria inhibited leucocyte migration in vitro and in vivo, and abundances of cluster genes were significantly reduced in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Together, these data provide a mechanism by which gut bacteria sulfonate steroidal metabolites and suggest that these compounds can modulate immune cell trafficking in the host.
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