RePOOPulate: How Fake Poop Can Cure Patients’ Stomach Ailments

Using something called a "robo-gut," scientists have made ersatz fecal matter to help fix stomach ailments. It’s not the most glamorous invention, but if it works… Fake poop: It’s not just something that elementary school kids would love to play with. It can also keep people healthy. Emma Allen-Vercoe, a microbiologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, revealed in early January that her synthetic poop, dubbed rePOOPulate, can cure gastrointestinal infections caused by a bacterium called Clostridium difficile (CDI) that can trigger severe diarrhea. Usually antibiotics can wipe out CDI, but in particularly bad cases, they don’t work. Allen-Vercoe’s artificial stool study, published in a new peer-reviewed journal called Microbiome, comes after years of the microbiologist’s work on a “robo-gut," a glass and stainless steel system that mi...