Team:NRP-UEA-Norwich
ENGINEERING NUTRITION TO INCREASE COLONIC BUTYRATE
THE PROJECT
Colon cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in England and Wales, with 30,000 new cases diagnosed every year and a registered cause of death in half that number.
Recent studies have suggested that high dietary intake of resistant starch may reduce colon cancer and inflammatory bowel disease. Resistant starches escape digestion in the small intestine and are fermented by microbiota in the colon. A small proportion of these colonic bacteria produce short chain fatty acids such as butyrate, which can activate apoptosis in colon cancer cells.
Our project is focused on increasing the amount of butyrate in the colon.
OUR SOLUTION
We are taking two approaches to increase butyrate levels in the colon.
The first approach is to produce modified starches that might be consumed as a prebiotic. We will test the capability of various putative acyltransferases to transfer acyl groups such as butyryl to the alpha-1,4 carbohydrates produced in bacteria and plants. This will involve modelling carbohydrate molecules to find optimal branching and solubility states.
The second approach is to transfer the butyrate biosynthetic pathway into culturable bacterial species with the long-term aim of producing a probiotic.
MODELLING
We used glycogen as a model system to gain a better understanding of the parameters involved in carbohydrate structure, branching and modification. We worked with an existing mathematical model to create structural predictions of carbohydrates.
We developed software to model the putative changes in glycogen structure depending on the position of the butyrate group in the glucose molecule, as growth or branching might be disrupted.
We also built 3D models of carbohydrates to show the importance of the branching degree and number of tiers in the final molecule conformation and we 3D printed them!
Finally, we followed a deterministic approach to model the enzyme kinetics of glycogen branching and debranching.
PROJECT TIMELINE
We kept a log of everything we did in and out of the labs so that you can follow our progress every step of the way.
Our project takes two approaches to prevent colon cancer - a Probiotic and a Prebiotic.
You can read the steps we took on our project timeline.
RESULTS
Under Construction......
