Researchers led by Patrice Cani, FNRS researcher at University of Louvain (UCLouvain) have studied a bacterium called Subdoligranulum that is almost absent in obese and diabetic people, while systematically present in healthy people. There is as yet only one cultivated strain of this bacterial family available in the world (the only known member of a large family), but unfortunately, it is not the strain that was observed to be decreased in sick people. This is not unusual: Nearly 70% of bacteria in the intestine have not yet been identified (this is called the dark matter of the intestine).