MUC2 and irritable bowel syndrome: In the present study, the live and heat-killed B.coagulans BC198 treatments showed an increase in theexpression of gut barrier-associated proteins (Figure 4), MUC2, and tight junction proteins, whichare reduced in patients with IBD.25−28 Lipoteichoic acid (LTA), embeddedin the cell wall of Gram-positive bacteria, is a ligand for patternrecognition receptors (PRR), such as the platelet-activating factorreceptor (PAFR) and toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) of intestinal epithelialcells.