ReviewMicrobiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR1998
Creating and maintaining the gastrointestinal ecosystem: what we know and need to know from gnotobiology.
Review in Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR, 1998. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 172 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
172 citing papers in PubMed, 650 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trial
- Specific prebiotics modulate gut microbiota and immune activation in HAART-naive HIV-infected adults: results of the "COPA" pilot randomized trial.Mucosal immunology · 2011Trial
- Probiotics prophylaxis in children with persistent primary vesicoureteral reflux.Pediatric nephrology (Berlin, Germany) · 2007Trial
- The gut microbiota directs vitamin A flux to regulate intestinal T cell development.Cell host & microbe · 2026Article
- Gnotobiology: from 19th-century global foundations to 21st-century omics - six decades of Czech contribution to microbiome research.Folia microbiologica · 2026Review
- The Oral Microbiota: Implications in Mucosal Health and Systemic Disease-Crosstalk with Gut and Brain.Cells · 2026Review
- The gut microbiota directs vitamin A flux to regulate intestinal T cell development.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Spontaneously fermented Allium cepa L. as a source of lactic acid bacteria with probiotic potential.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Dextran sodium sulfate-induced colitis alters the proportion and composition of replicating gut bacteria.mSphere · 2025Article
- Gut Competition Dynamics of Live Bacterial Therapeutics Are Shaped by Microbiome Complexity, Diet, and Therapeutic Transgenes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The impact of HIV antiretroviral therapy on gut microbiota: the need for well-designed longitudinal studies.Journal of infection in developing countries · 2024Review
- An emerging role for the gut microbiome in tauopathy.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2024Review
- MIR-21 regulating distribution of intestinal flora through TNF-α promotes progression of ulcerative colitis.Journal of medical biochemistry · 2024Article
- Secretory-IgA binding to intestinal microbiota attenuates inflammatory reactions as the intestinal barrier of preterm infants matures.Clinical and experimental immunology · 2023Article
- Towards the generation of gnotobiotic larvae as a tool to investigate the influence of the microbiome on the development of the amphibian immune system.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Decreased Enterobacteriaceae translocation due to gut microbiota remodeling mediates the alleviation of premature aging by a high-fat diet.Aging cell · 2023Article
- Dietary fiber pectin: challenges and potential anti-inflammatory benefits for preterms and newborns.Frontiers in nutrition · 2023Review
- Sterility testing of germ-free mouse colonies.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Review
- Questioning the fetal microbiome illustrates pitfalls of low-biomass microbial studies.Nature · 2023Review
- Association of SARS-CoV-2 and Polypharmacy with Gut-Lung Axis: From Pathogenesis to Treatment.ACS omega · 2022Review
112 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Studying the cross talk between nonpathogenic organisms and their mammalian hosts represents an experimental challenge because these interactions are typically subtle and the microbial societies that associate with mammalian hosts are very complex and dynamic. A large, functionally stable, climax community of microbes is maintained in the murine and human gastrointestinal tracts. This open ecosystem exhibits not only regional differences in the composition of its microbiota but also regional differences in the differentiation programs of its epithelial cells and in the spatial distribution of its component immune cells. A key experimental strategy for determining whether "nonpathogenic" microorganisms actively create their own regional habitats in this ecosystem is to define cellular function in germ-free animals and then evaluate the effects of adding single or several microbial species. This review focuses on how gnotobiotics-the study of germ-free animals-has been and needs to be used to examine how the gastrointestinal ecosystem is created and maintained. Areas discussed include the generation of simplified ecosystems by using genetically manipulatable microbes and hosts to determine whether components of the microbiota actively regulate epithelial differentiation to create niches for themselves and for other organisms; the ways in which gnotobiology can help reveal collaborative interactions among the microbiota, epithelium, and mucosal immune system; and the ways in which gnotobiology is and will be useful for identifying host and microbial factors that define the continuum between nonpathogenic and pathogenic. A series of tests of microbial contributions to several pathologic states, using germ-free and ex-germ-free mice, are proposed.
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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.