Gut enzymes key to producing universal blood

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 60, No. 8, October 2018, Pages 411,414 News

UBC researchers have identified a new group of enzymes that can turn any blood type into the universally usable type O.

Blood type is determined by the presence of antigens on the surface of red blood cells, and antigens can trigger an immune response if they are foreign to the body; therefore, transfusion patients should receive either their own blood type or type O to avoid a reaction.

Removing antigens from blood effectively transforms it into type O. Lead researcher Stephen Withers, a professor of chemistry at UBC, and his team previously developed enzymes that were capable of doing so, but this latest study identifies a more powerful group of enzymes found in the human gut.

The researchers sampled DNA from millions of microorganisms found in environmental samples—a technique known as metagenomics—to find an environment in which the desired enzymes might be found. They eventually focused on the mucosal lining of the human gut, which contains sugars that are similar in structure to blood antigens.

By homing in on the bacteria feeding on those sugars, they isolated the enzymes the bacteria use to pluck off the sugar molecules. They then produced quantities of those enzymes through cloning and found that they were capable of performing a similar action on blood antigens.

Withers and his colleagues—UBC microbiologist Steven Hallam and pathologist Jay Kizhakkedathu of the Centre for Blood Research at UBC—are applying for a patent on the new enzymes and are hoping to test them on a larger scale in the future, in preparation for clinical testing.

The study, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, was presented at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in Boston in August 2018.

. Gut enzymes key to producing universal blood. BCMJ, Vol. 60, No. 8, October, 2018, Page(s) 411,414 - News.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply