We are all born with different blood types. What this means is that when it is time for a blood tranfusion, we can only receive blood that is the same type as ours, meaning that a Type A can only receive from a Type A, not a Type B, or Type AB, and so on. This is also why Type O is so valuable because it is the only universal blood type.
This means that a person with Type O can donate blood to everyone else. Unfortunately, Type O isn’t as common as we would like, so there are instances when a person could die due to the lack of their blood type. The good news is that it seems that scientists have figured out a way to fix that by using gut bacteria that can convert all blood types to Type O.
Discovered back in August, the results of the study was recently published to the Nature Microbiology journal where according to the scientists, by using gut bacteria, it allowed them to the sugars from the cells of the various blood types, which in turn converted it into Type O. Now, the use of enzymes to remove sugars isn’t exactly new, but in the past, there was no safe or efficient way of doing so, at least until the scientists discovered that gut bacteria could be used.
The next step will involve testing it out in a clinical setting to see if there might be any negative side-effect to the procedure, in which if there is none, could greatly improve blood transfusions in the future.