 Hi, we're at the Femmes Conference on Microbiology and I'm joined by Natasha Golić. Thank you for letting us interview you, Natasha. You're affiliated to the host microbe interaction group, the voluntary for molecular microbiology Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering in Belgrade. And you've done research on microbiome and showing how antibiotics impact the microbiome negatively. Diabetes and diseases can be aggravated because of it and also how probiotics can help. My first question that I would like to ask you is where did things go wrong? Was it when we started farming or when we had the industrial revolution? Could you tell us something about that? Yes, actually what is known today that we have some different way of living and we eat more ready to use food, it's industrially prepared food full of preservatives and chemicals and it's quite different than we used to eat traditional food full of probiotic bacteria. For example, artisanal cheeses or artisanal meat, sausages and cabbage, sour cabbage, for example, they are full of probiotic bacteria and used to people take, took more that kind of food and they were much healthier. But today we eat more ready to use food full of chemicals and also antibiotics are not so well regulated and people can take it without some strict regulations and is particularly if it happens early in life up to five years in childhood, for example, then immune system cannot evolve properly and then we face autoimmune diseases. But people that live still in some healthy area in villages that still eat traditional food, they live a much longer life and much healthier life and in our studies we actually showed what is that in that food that is important for health and for long living. For example, we found bacteria that influence longevity and that can prolong life and stop aging, not stop but reduce the aging process actually. So that's very interesting in our studies. Absolutely, absolutely. And this research you did in C. elegans. So it is an animal that you did research in, but it is not higher in the hierarchy like mice or monkey men. So how would you say this would translate to when you would get to the point that it's usable for treatment, for instance, what steps are to be taken? Yeah, actually C. elegans is a really well established model system, animal model system for aging studies because they have short life. All other animals, particularly mice or rats, they live longer and then it's much more difficult to follow and the experiments are much longer to study aging processes. So that's why C. elegans is important as a model system for that kind of studies. And it's well established and in literature data, the data that I obtained in that model system are taken as relative for that kind of thing. So for us, it was more important to reveal what kind of mechanisms staying behind. And we found that autophagy, particularly lipophagy, is the process that is involved in anti-aging, actually anti-aging properties of this bacteria. OK, OK, thanks a lot. And I also would like to know a bit about the research on EPS and pain inflammatory hyperalgesia. The findings of this research can be seen also as results of or can it also be applied to other pain issues or is it specific inflammatory pain? Yeah, it's actually the property of this bacteria because this EPS has particular and specific immunomodulatory properties and it reacts as immunosuppressor. And that's why we use the inflammatory pain as model system for studying of anti-inflammatory properties. I don't know for other pains if it will be relevant. OK, OK, I let's say I have with interest to this interview because I think many of us can relate to the issues of modern life and the consequences it has for your cuts. I was also interested about the gut brain access and particularly I've seen a book released some time ago about ADHD diet. And of course, you're aware of the patient, but it describes how diet can relieve them from ADHD. And in your presentation, you mentioned also other conditions in that brain gut access. So would you say there's also, for instance, ASS diet, thinkable or other brain related diseases? Can they also be helped, treated or cured by diet? Yes, definitely, yes. According to literature data and according to our results, we now can say that microbiota is strongly involved in the gut microbiota brain access. Particularly, it's shown that some gut bacteria, it's so-called next generation bacteria and those anaerobic bacteria living in our gut now are studying more to be cultivated and more studying. They are still not well known. Some of them are studied and characterized, but most of them still are not. But for some of them, it was shown that they produce some molecules, some small molecules, bioactive molecules that are involved in gut brain access, particularly GABA or Schochenfetiae acids. But also what is interesting is that, for example, Turicibacter, one of the bacteria found in our gut, is also involved in the transport of serotonin from epithelial cells to further to brain functioning, to brain functioning. So, yes, this is a really new field and I think that more research is needed in that field. So it's really new and more bacteria from gut should be characterized until we reveal a real function of these bacteria in gut brain access. But it's our future work aimed to establish this. I've also received a question from Wauke Audega, because he was interested, based on your presentation, what's the molecular mechanism of the relation between autoimmune diseases and gut microbiome? Could you tell us something more about that? Yeah, this is what I said in the beginning, that colonization of our gut, by gut bacteria, starting early in our life after the birth. And if that process doesn't occur properly, then immune system cannot be formed properly. And then that's why we have that much autoimmune diseases, because immune system doesn't work properly because of hygiene hypothesis. And we live now in a more, let's say, clear and sterile environment. And also, we use a lot of antibiotics and chemicals early in childhood, so gut microbiota cannot be established properly in early in life. And that's why immune system doesn't work properly later. And, for example, in multiple sclerosis experiment with rats, we show that when we use antibiotics during pregnancy and during the winning phase of smaller rats, that these rats can much worse clinical science for multiple sclerosis than a contour group, pointing that really gut microbiota is involved in the development of immune system. And if it's in this biosis from the first stages of our life, then we have more autoimmune diseases. So that's very simple, actually. Yeah, yeah, we have to learn more mechanisms staying behind, but gut microbiota is definitely very important. I have one question to conclude. Because you started with artisan foods, and, of course, food is no longer produced in the old-fashioned way. Do you also see the risk of losing basically the recipes for success? So are there also artisan foods disappearing that you actually would like to research here? Yes, actually, the huge problem is that artisanal food is disappearing because we lose the diversity of these bacteria present in artisanal food. And the aim of our laboratory for, let's say, 20 years, since 20 years, is we collected more than 4,000 lactic acid bacteria from artisanal cheeses from Serbia and other Western Balkan countries. And we found that these bacteria have really special probiotic and technological properties, so we really need to keep artisanal products, to keep the diversity of bacteria that are so important for our laboratory. And is there a countermeasure that you say, okay, this is how we start doing that? Is it something that you also look to the public to help you in that? How would you do that? Actually, we try to make starter culture for dairy food that can imitate those artisanal starters. And we also aim to make probiotic mixed cultures to treat some autoimmune diseases. So that's the aim of our group. Okay, thanks a lot. A special question we always have in the interviews is what's your favorite microbe? And could you tell us a bit about that microbe? Okay, our favorite microbe at this moment is turistibacter, because we found that it is very interesting in the gut brain axis, and particularly we found it related to multiple sclerosis. So I think that our work will be more continued on that bacteria. Well, I hope so too. And I want to thank you for this interview. Is there anything that you would like to add? No, it's mostly that is said already. Thank you.