Engage your Audience! 2017 - Aline Potiron (France)
Channel: FEMS Microbiology
Date: 10/08/2017

This is Aline Potiron's application video for the Engage your Audience! 2017 contest, which she participated in during FEMS 2017. 

How cholesterol conversion into coprostanol by bacteria from the gut microbiota can preserve hypercholesterolemic people from cardiovascular diseases?

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the world affecting more than 200 million people. One of the main risk factors to develop these diseases is elevated blood cholesterol level. Cholesterol can be accumulated at the arterial wall forming atheroma plaque which can break leading to infarctus and stroke - cardiovascular diseases. More than three-quarters of the world's population has hypercholesterolemia. Several treatments targeting host synthesis and transport of cholesterol exist but patients complain of heavy side effects and contrasting efficiency. Another way to limit cholesterolemia is to transform cholesterol into another molecule. In fact, the intestinal microbiota of some people can convert cholesterol into coprostanol which is then eliminated in feces. By doing this, these very little known bacteria (only one identified in humans) could decrease the amount of cholesterol available to enter in the bloodstream reducing the formation of atheroma plaque. During this thesis work, we identified people with this kind of microbiota. We examined it to identified new bacteria that have this function and try to understand how they can convert cholesterol into coprostanol. Now we are using them in mice without microbiota to compare their efficiencies in producing coprostanol and lowering circulating cholesterol.