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By analyzing more than four thousand animals, researchers found that the mix of microbes in a rat's gut is influenced not only by its own DNA but also by the DNA of the other rats it lives with. The strongest connection involved the gene St6galnac1, which adds sugar molecules to the gut's mucus, and the abundance of Paraprevotella, a bacterium the researchers think feeds on those sugars. Genes have social lives Because the dataset was so large, the researchers were able, for the first time, to estimate how much of each rat's microbiome could be explained by its own genes and how much could be explained by the genes of the other rats it lived with. It has also been demonstrated that Paraprevotella triggers the degradation of the digestive enzymes the virus uses to enter a host's cells, so the researchers hypothesize that genetic variants in ST6GAL1 could affect Paraprevotella abundance and, in turn, viral infection.