Some fish have bacteria on the brain.
Wild and lab-grown members of the salmon family including European rainbow trout, Chinook salmon and Gila trout harbor active microbial communities inside their brains, researchers report September 18 in Science Advances. Lab-reared rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) brains may source more than half of bacteria from their blood and guts, suggesting that microbes from other parts of the body traverse the blood-brain barrier to colonize the organ.
Animal brains are thought to be free of bacteria, with any invasion typically linked to disease (SN: 3/1/23). A growing body of work, for instance, shows that brain-infiltrating microbes may be linked with conditions such as
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