Downtown
Population: trillions. Most of them are eating.
Tour the set
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Your guide to Downtown
The colon, or large intestine, is the last big stop: wider and shorter than the small intestine, about a metre and a half long. Food that gets this far has already had most of its nutrients taken out. What’s left is mainly fibre and water.
Downtown is where most of your gut microbes live: the bulk of the roughly 38 trillion bacteria in an adult. Biff, Lacey and Shorty, the bifidobacteria, ferment fibres like inulin and FOS into short-chain fatty acids: acetate, propionate and butyrate. Gas comes along too, which is the giggle in GigglyGut. Meanwhile the colon takes back water as things move along.
Most of your gut microbes live in the colon. They ferment the fibre you can’t digest into short-chain fatty acids, and some gas.
Butyrate, one of those acids, is the main fuel for the cells lining the colon.
Locals and staff
The busiest neighbourhood in the gut. The bifidos run the buffet, and Longo has been here longest.
Biff
Lacey
Shorty
Longo
Rhamny
Alpha-galactosidase
Inulin
FOS
Polydextrose
Fibre
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Your passport so far
Passport · Channel GG
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Next stop down the gut · Stop 9
Second Brain FM
The enteric nervous system. The gut’s own nervous system: hundreds of millions of neurons, on the air all day.
