geekosystem

Researchers at the University of Guelph believe they've given doctors a new weapon in the fight against the pernicious stomach disease Clostridium difficile, which is a problem for patients in hospitals the world over. That weapon? Synthetic human feces. Dubbed RePOOPulate by the researchers who created it -- and thanks for that, because if you're going to name your synthetic poop substitute, by all means, be a little clever about it -- the synthetic poop is a mixture of probiotics that can be transplanted into a patient's intestine to return it to a more balanced bacterial makeup.

Antibiotics, while being one of the greatest advances in medical history, have their downsides. Sometimes, they can do some collateral damage and destroy cultures of bacteria that rightfully belong in the human body, nice cultures of nice bacteria. When these get killed, problems start. One of the more common instances of this has to do with intestinal bacteria. When the intestinal bacteria landscape gets screwed up, sometimes the only way to right the situation is to reintroduce a culture of healthy bacteria to the area. How do you do that? A fecal transplant.