Niche exclusion of a lung pathogen in mice with designed probiotic communities
Kelsey E Hern, Ashlee M Phillips, Catherine M Mageeney, Kelly P Williams, Anupama Sinha, Hans K Carlson, Kunal Poorey, Nicole M Collette, Steven S Branda, Adam P Arkin, Bavesh D Kana, Kelsey E Hern, Ashlee M Phillips, Catherine M Mageeney, Kelly P Williams, Anupama Sinha, Hans K Carlson, Kunal Poorey, Nicole M Collette, Steven S Branda, Adam P Arkin · 2026
Read Niche exclusion of a lung pathogen in mice with designed probiotic communities by Kelsey E Hern, Ashlee M Phillips, Catherine M Mageeney, Kelly P Williams, Anupama Sinha, Hans K Carlson, Kunal Poorey, Nicole M Collette, Steven S Branda, Adam P Arkin, Bavesh D Kana, Kelsey E Hern, Ashlee M Phillips, Catherine M Mageeney, Kelly P Williams, Anupama Sinha, Hans K Carlson, Kunal Poorey, Nicole M Collette, Steven S Branda, Adam P Arkin (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13436956.txt.
Description
Kelsey Hern and a large team tested whether friendly bacteria placed in the airway could block a lung germ in mice. Their 2026 work targeted Burkholderia thailandensis, a soil germ that can cause serious lung infection. The team reasoned that microbes living in the airway meet incoming germs first, so a well-chosen mix might crowd a newcomer out.
Lab tests of how the friendly strains and the germ compete guided which mixes the researchers tried in the animals. Mixes whose food and living needs overlapped most with the germ's needs protected the mice best. That overlap, called niche overlap, predicted success in the body better than other traits. The study offers a design rule for building protective bacterial mixes: pick members that want the same resources as the germ they must exclude. The authors frame the work as a base for later efforts against chest infections.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Kelsey E Hern, Ashlee M Phillips, Catherine M Mageeney, Kelly P Williams, Anupama Sinha, Hans K Carlson, Kunal Poorey, Nicole M Collette, Steven S Branda, Adam P Arkin, Bavesh D Kana, Kelsey E Hern, Ashlee M Phillips, Catherine M Mageeney, Kelly P Williams, Anupama Sinha, Hans K Carlson, Kunal Poorey, Nicole M Collette, Steven S Branda, Adam P Arkin |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 104 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC0 |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |