The human large bowel is colonized by complex and diverse bacterial communities. However, the relationship between commensal bowel bacteria and adenomas (colorectal cancer precursors) is unclear. T...

Choline is an essential nutrient for humans, though some of the requirement can be met by endogenous synthesis catalyzed by phosphatidylethanolamine A‐methyltransferase (PEMT). Premenopausal women are relatively resistant to choline deficiency compared with postmenopausal women and men. Studies in animals suggest that estrogen treatment can increase PEMT activity. In this study we investigated whether the PEMT gene is regulated by estrogen. PEMT transcription was increased in a dose‐dependent manner when primary mouse and human hepatocytes were treated with 17‐β‐estradiol for 24 h. This increased message was associated with an increase in protein expression and enzyme activity. In addition, we report a region that contains a perfect estrogen response element (ERE) ~7.5 kb from the transcription start site corresponding to transcript variants NM_007169 and NM‐008819 of the human and murine PEMT genes, respectively, three imperfect EREs in evolutionarily conserved regions and multiple imperfect EREs in nonconserved regions in the putative promoter regions. We predict that both the mouse and human PEMT genes have three unique transcription start sites, which are indicative of either multiple promoters and/or alternative splicing. This study is the first to explore the underlying mechanism of why dietary requirements for choline vary with estrogen status in humans.—Resseguie M., Song, J., Niculescu, M. D., da Costa K., Randall, T. A., Zeisel S. H. Phosphatidylethanolamine A ‐methyltrans‐ferase (PEMT) gene expression is induced by estrogen in human and mouse primary hepatocytes. FASEB J. 21, 2622–2632 (2007)

Differences in the composition of the gut microbial community have been associated with diseases such as obesity, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and colorectal cancer (CRC). We used 454 titanium pyrosequencing of the V1–V2 region of the 16S rRNA gene to characterize adherent bacterial communities in mucosal biopsy samples from 33 subjects with adenomas and 38 subjects without adenomas (controls). Biopsy samples from subjects with adenomas had greater numbers of bacteria from 87 taxa than controls; only 5 taxa were more abundant in control samples. The magnitude of the differences in the distal gut microbiota between patients with adenomas and controls was more pronounced than that of any other clinical parameters including obesity, diet or family history of CRC. This suggests that sequence analysis of the microbiota could be used to identify patients at risk for developing adenomas.

To overview the gene content of the important pathogen Phytophthora infestans, large-scale cDNA and genomic sequencing was performed. A set of 75,757 high-quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from P. infestans was obtained from 20 cDNA libraries representing a broad range of growth conditions, stress responses, and developmental stages. These included libraries from P. infestans-potato and -tomato interactions, from which 963 pathogen ESTs were identified. To complement the ESTs, onefold coveragethe P. infestans genome was obtained and regions of coding potential identified. A unigene set of 18,256 sequences was derived from the EST and genomic data and characterized for potential functions, stage-specific patterns of expression, and codon bias. Cluster analysis of ESTs revealed major differences between the expressed gene content of mycelial and spore-related stages, and affinities between some growth conditions. Comparisons with databases of fungal pathogenicity genes revealed conserved elements of pa...