When your body doesn’t absorb certain pieces of hyaluronan (a substance found in joints and skin), your gut bacteria break them down into tiny fatty acids—and in mice, these fatty acids are the only things your body gets from those bacteria.

Synthesize all existing controlled mouse studies measuring microbial metabolites in feces, blood, and tissues after oral administration of defined hyaluronan fragments, comparing metabolite profiles with and without gut microbiota (e.g., germ-free vs. conventional mice), to confirm short-chain fatty acids are the only detectable microbial metabolites.

Demonstrate that only short-chain fatty acids appear in host tissues after hyaluronan fragment ingestion in conventional mice, but not in germ-free mice, and that no other microbial metabolites are detectable.

Track the temporal appearance of microbial metabolites in mice after hyaluronan fragment ingestion to confirm SCFAs are the sole metabolites produced and absorbed.

Confirm that hyaluronan fragments are fermented by gut bacteria to produce only SCFAs and no other metabolites in a controlled environment.

Compare microbial metabolite profiles in mice naturally exposed to hyaluronan fragments versus those not exposed, to determine if SCFAs are uniquely elevated.