Most animal digestive tracts are colonized by complex microbial communities making it
difficult to study the molecular interactions underlying the symbiosis. Due to its simple gut …

Animal digestive tracts house an array of microorganisms that play a beneficial role in aiding
digestion. Studying digestive-tract microbiota poses many challenges including: the vast …

Culture-based studies of the microbial community within the gut of the medicinal leech have
typically been focused on various Aeromonas species, which were believed to be the sole …

There are trillions of microbes found throughout the human body and they exceed the
number of eukaryotic cells by 10-fold. Metagenomic studies have revealed that the majority …

The digestive tract symbiosis of the medicinal leech, Hirudo verbana, is a model system for
studying the genes required for microbial colonization of digestive tracts, as H. verbana has …

Host-associated microbial communities are widespread in nature and vital to the health and
fitness of the host. Deciphering the physiology of the microbiome in vivo is critical to …

Most digestive tracts contain a complex consortium of beneficial microorganisms, making it
challenging to tease apart the molecular interactions between symbiont and host. The …

Digestive-tract microbiota exert tremendous influence over host health. Host-symbiont model
systems are studied to investigate how symbioses are initiated and maintained, as well as to …

Leeches are found in terrestrial, aquatic, and marine habitats on all continents.
Sanguivorous leeches have been used in medicine for millennia. Modern scientific uses …

The medicinal leech, Hirudo verbana, is one of the simplest naturally occurring models for
digestive-tract symbioses, where only two bacterial species, Aeromonas veronii bv. sobria (γ …