From TikTok to kombucha tea, gut health is having a moment – after we've already been hearing about it for years. Rightly so.
Your gut – and its diverse mix of bacteria known as the microbiome – is no longer just about digestion. Gut "health" is also linked to the health of your heart, brain, immune system, and more.
The problem: Much about what's going in in there and what bacteria populate it at what levels – and how to interpret it all – remains a mystery. Studying the gut is tricky. Animal research may not be useful, because animals have different digestive enzymes and gut bacteria than humans do. And typical lab tests, like growing cells in a petri dish, don't capture how complex the gut is, a part of the body where many types of cells grow and interact in a moist, flowing, oxygen-free environment.
An emerging technology, called "gut on a chip," promises to change all that, opening the door to experiments never before possible and promising to advance medical research, according to a new paper in APL Bioengineering .
Your Gut on a Chip
It's among the latest advances in "organ on a chip" technology, the concept of putting human cells in a device designed to mimic the activity of human organs.
