Twin Study Defines Shared Features Of Human Gut Microbial Communities: Variations Linked To Obesity

Twin Study Defines Shared Features Of Human Gut Microbial Communities: Variations Linked To Obesity:
ScienceDaily 2008.12.02
"'This suggests that early environmental exposures play a key role in determining which microbes colonize our intestinal tracts,' Gordon says. 'It appears that we acquire an enormous number of genes - in the form of our microbial genes - from our early environment.' These microbial genes, together with our human genes, form our 'metagenome.'...The current research is part of the ongoing human microbiome project, which seeks to not only catalog the microbial species and genes associated with healthy bodies and certain disease states, but to understand how our microbial communities function. Microbial cells are estimated to outnumber human cells by a factor of ten to one. Collectively, the microbes are estimated to carry far more than the 20,000 genes that make up the DNA that we inherit from our parents..."

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Gut Check: Microbes Colonize Newborns' Digestive Tracts: "ScienceDaily (June 26, 2007) — For more than 100 years, scientists have known that humans carry a rich ecosystem within their intestines. An astonishing number and variety of microbes, including as many as 400 species of bacteria, help humans digest food, mitigate disease, regulate fat storage, and even promote the formation of blood vessels. By applying sophisticated genetic analysis to samples of a year's worth baby poop, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have now developed a detailed picture of how these bacteria come and go in the intestinal tract during a child's first year of life...Before birth, the human intestinal tract is sterile, but babies immediately begin to acquire the microbial denizens of the gut from their environment -- the birth canal, mothers' breast, and even the touch of a sibling or parent. Within days, a thriving microbial community is established and by adulthood, the human body typically has as many as ten times more microbial cells than human cells. This is primarily due to the large number of microorganisms that have taken up residence in the intestine...intestinal microbial communities varied widely from baby to baby -- both in terms of which microbes were present and in how that composition changed over time. That finding, she said, is important because it helps broaden the definition of healthy microbial colonization in a baby...Another intriguing observation, Palmer noted, was a tendency for sudden shifts in the composition of the infants' intestinal microbial communities over time as different species of bacteria ebbed and flowed... Over time, however, the composition of the intestinal microbial communities converged toward a more generic profile characteristic of the adult intestine..."

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