We hope that this study leads to more research on the potential for I3C dietary supplementation as a prophylactic or therapy for those at highest risk of Crypto infection - the very young and malnourished.

Please read the full paper for more interesting bits like the prophylactic effect of I3C in neonates, and the potential use of Cryptosporidium as a good small intestinal damage model.

Thanks for reading so far!

7/7

Indole-3-carbinol is a phytochemical enriched in Brassica veggies 🥦🥬 It activates AHR.

Supplementing mouse diets with I3C augments their IEL population.

So we fed mice I3C and challenged them with Cryptosporidium. They were protected!

I went straight home and ate some kale.

6/

We zeroed in on intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs) because:

- they are very important gut barrier protectors
- they highly express AHR
- they proliferate in response to Crypto infection
- these express greater levels of IFN-g and Granzyme-B

But what about those indoles I mentioned earlier?

5/

And so, a collaborative project was born! We asked if AHR expression in the small #intestine (where crypto exclusively loves to hang out) was also protective.

The short, surprising, *Ron Howard voice* answer? It wasn't.

The real answer was one layer deeper --

Using a series of mouse knockout models, we found that mice lacking AHR expression in their immune progenitor cells were much more susceptible to Crypto infections.

4/

Why work together in the first place? We followed two leads:

☝️A 2016 study (PMID27245413) found that fecal #indole levels in humans negatively correlated with Crypto infections
✌️The transcription factor #AHR (which can be activated by indoles) is vital for protection/repair after epithelial injury or infection in the mouse colon
3/