our body is About 30 trillion human cells, but they also host about 39 trillion microbial cells. The communities of bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and fungi in our gut, mouth, skin, and elsewhere are collectively called the human microbiome, and are made up entirely of freeloaders and lurking pathogens. It does not mean. Rather, as scientists are increasingly realizing, these microbes form ecosystems that are vital to our health. A growing body of research is aimed at understanding how it can deprive, interfere with the digestion of food, and possibly cause distress in our bodies and minds.
But we still know so little about the microbiome that we are just beginning to answer more fundamental questions. Where do these microbes come from? Can they be passed on from other people, like cold viruses or stomach worms?
The largest and most comprehensive analysis of human microbiome transmission now yields some important clues.A study led by a genomicist at the University of Trento in Italy has found hints that microbiome organisms circulate widely among people, especially those who spend a lot of time together. Naturefills an important gap in our understanding of how people assemble their microbiomes and reconstruct them throughout life.
Other scientists have praised the work. José Clemente Ritran, associate professor of genetics and genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, hailed the study as “outstanding” and how much sharing is possible among families and living people. said it provided the first clear measure of what to expect…together.
The study also fuels intriguing speculation about whether microbes can raise or lower the risk of diseases such as diabetes and cancer, bringing a contagious dimension to diseases not normally thought of as contagious. increase. Brett Finlay is Professor of Microbiology at Columbia University, British chemistry In 2020, the findings “put the final nail in the coffin that non-communicable diseases probably shouldn’t be called that.”
Immense Diversity
Your microbiome is like your fingerprint. So diverse that no two people can have the same thing. They’re also incredibly dynamic, growing, shrinking, and evolving throughout a person’s lifetime, so by the time they’re older, a baby’s microbiome looks dramatically different. It is seen in over 100% of people, but most species are seen in 20% to 90% of people. (flat Escherichia coliIt is probably the only gut bacterium most people can name, but its frequency is less than 90%.) Studies show that in non-Westernized societies, the microbial diversity is even greater and the microbiome has been suggested to be more diverse.
Within a population, two randomly selected individuals typically have less than half of the microbiome species in common. On average, the overlap in gut microbial composition is between 30% and 35%. Microbiologists debate whether there is a “core” set of microbial species that every healthy person has, but if there is, it’s probably her single-digit percentage of the total.
But determining how often microbes pass between people is a much more formidable problem than looking for species.A single species consists of many different strains, or genetic variants. It may have been Researchers therefore need to be able to examine the genes of his samples of the microbiome to identify individual strains. There are also potentially 2-20 million unique microbial genes in the human microbiome, and microbes are constantly rearranging, mutating and evolving their genes.
