As you remember, Patient 23 received antibiotics during week 3, and by week 5 they were feeling better! Below you’ll find a new piece of data: their microbiome at week 7.

So what happened? The antibiotics seemed to make Patient 23 so much healthier… how did they get sick again? Let’s review a key concept we discovered last week:

So how might this impact Patient 23? Here’s the question we’ll answer today:

How can having fewer than normal bacteria in the gut microbiome affect the overall health of the body?

To figure this out, scientists have used experiments with mice. Even though they are very different from us in many ways, mice have very similar microbiomes. This makes them good test subjects for learning more about the microbiome.

Read the description of an experiment performed by scientists on mice. Then, answer the questions below.

Scientists wanted to know whether having fewer bacteria in their gut microbiome would make a mouse more likely to become infected with Salmonella, a type of harmful bacteria. They ran an experiment with 40 laboratory mice. At the start of the experiment, 20 mice had normal gut microbiomes and 20 mice had low-bacteria gut microbiomes. Both groups were healthy at the start of the experiment. Then, each group of mice ingested (ate) Salmonella bacteria.

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