The urinary tract commensal Peptoniphilus spp. encodes a novel 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase
Briawna Binion, Saeed Ahmad, Taojun Wang, Elizabeth Tang, Betsy Barnick, Damie Olukoya, Pauline Mbuvi, Debapriya Dutta, John W. Erdman, H. Rex Gaskins, Glen Yang, Joseph Irudayaraj, Jason M. Ridlon · 2026
Read The urinary tract commensal Peptoniphilus spp. encodes a novel 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase by Briawna Binion, Saeed Ahmad, Taojun Wang, Elizabeth Tang, Betsy Barnick, Damie Olukoya, Pauline Mbuvi, Debapriya Dutta, John W. Erdman, H. Rex Gaskins, Glen Yang, Joseph Irudayaraj, Jason M. Ridlon (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/pmc-13599511.txt.
Description
Briawna Binion and twelve co-authors find a new hormone-shuffling enzyme in a urinary tract bacterium, in a 2026 study. Microbes living in the body can extend the human hormone system by converting steroids. Such activity matters in prostate cancer, where bacterial androgen production may blunt hormone therapy.
The team isolated androgen-forming bacteria from men's urine. In one species they characterized a previously unknown enzyme that converts a weak androgen into testosterone and back, powered by a common cellular fuel. A search of other genomes found a similar enzyme in a second genus, which they built and tested to confirm the same activity despite little sequence resemblance to known enzymes. Both enzymes accept a broad range of related steroids. The findings widen the known cast of hormone-active enzymes in the urinary microbiome.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Briawna Binion, Saeed Ahmad, Taojun Wang, Elizabeth Tang, Betsy Barnick, Damie Olukoya, Pauline Mbuvi, Debapriya Dutta, John W. Erdman, H. Rex Gaskins, Glen Yang, Joseph Irudayaraj, Jason M. Ridlon |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 52 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |