References
More about the Technology
The phenomena of the influence of interactive microbial consortia on their environment and hosts have been widely documented in scientific papers and publications. The various information and articles below provide some indications of how and why the technology works.
- Microbial
Communities - Human
Microbiome - Animal
Microbiome - Earth
Microbiome - Plant
Microbiome -
Videos
Microbial Communities
The importance of microbial communities to Human and Environmental concerns are described in a 2003 publication by the American Academy of Microbiology.
Keep Reading > TI Food and Nutrition: Complex Fermentations
Keep Reading > Publications from Laboratory of Microbial Ecology and Technology of Ghent University
Culturing the "Unculturables"
Paradoxically, the majority of microorganisms from the environment resist cultivation in the laboratory. These “uncultivables” represent 99-99.99% of all microorganisms in nature. From hundreds of thousands (or millions!) of existing microbial species only a few thousand have been isolated in pure culture and properly described. Several groups at the division level have been identified with no known cultivable representatives. Not surprisingly, the American Society for Microbiology recognized the riddle of “uncultivable” microorganisms as one of the main challenges for research in microbiology.
Keep Reading > Growing Unculturable Bacteria
Keep Reading > Unculturable bacteria - the uncharacterized organisms that cause oral infection
Keep Reading > Detection of Unculturable Bacteria in Periodontal Health and Disease by PCR
Keep Reading > Strategies for culture of "unculturable" bacteria
Keep Reading > Sequencing the impossible: working with "unculturable" bacteria
Keep Reading > The Modern Myth of "Unculturable" Bacteria
Keep Reading > Bacterial Diversity and "Unculturables"
Keep Reading > Metagenomics for studying unculturable microorganisms: cutting the Gordian knot
Keep Reading > Metagenomics: Access to Unculturable Microbes in the Environment
Keep Reading > ‘Unculturable’ bacterial diversity: An untapped resource
Keep Reading > Metagenomics and Microbial Communities
Keep Reading > METAGENOMICS: Genomic Analysis of Microbial Communities
Contents
Goto > Human Microbiome and The Second Brain
Goto > Gut Microbes and Metabolic Dysfunction
Goto > Medical Ecology and the Human Microbiome
Human Microbiome and The Second Brain
The human microbiome (or human microbiota) is the aggregate of microorganisms that reside on the surface and in deep layers of skin, in the saliva and oral mucosa, in the conjunctiva, and in the gastrointestinal tracts. Some of these organisms perform tasks that are useful for the human host. However, the majority have been too poorly researched to understand the role they play. Those that are expected to be present, and that under normal circumstances do not cause disease, but instead participate in maintaining health, are deemed members of the normal flora. Studies in 2009 questioned whether the decline in biota as a result of human intervention might impede human health. Most of the microbes associated with humans appear to be not harmful at all, but rather assist in maintaining processes necessary for a healthy body. A surprising finding was that at specific sites on the body, a different set of microbes may perform the same function for different people. For example, on the tongues of two people two entirely different sets of organisms will break down sugars in the same way. This suggests that medical science may be forced to abandon the one-microbe model of disease, and rather pay attention to the function of a group of microbes that has somehow gone awry.
(Extract from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome)
The Human Microbiome Project (HMP) is a United States National Institutes of Health initiative with the goal of identifying and characterizing the microorganisms which are found in association with both healthy and diseased humans (i.e. their microbial flora). The Human Microbiome Project has provided many insights as to how the body microbiota is acting on body physiology. Among the first clinical applications utilizing the HMP data, as reported in several PLoS papers, the researchers found a shift to less species diversity in vaginal microbiome of pregnant women in preparation for birth, and high viral DNA load in the nasal microbiome of children with unexplained fevers. Other studies using the HMP data and techniques include role of microbiome in various diseases in the digestive tract, skin, reproductive organs and childhood disorders.
Dr. Michael Gershon has devoted his career to understanding the human bowel (the stomach, esophagus, small intestine, and colon). His thirty years of research have led to an extraordinary rediscovery: nerve cells in the gut that act as a brain. This "second brain" can control our gut all by itself. While it’s not a center of conscious thought, new research is showing that it has widespread influence on our physical bodies and our emotional well-being.
Keep reading > The Human Microbiome Project
Keep reading > Explore the Human Microbiome [Interactive]
Keep reading > The Economist: Me, Myself, Us
Keep reading > The Economist: Microbe Maketh Man
Keep reading > Human Health: Microbioma and Environmental Health
Keep reading > The Scientist: Microbial Menagerie
Keep reading > 10 Ways the Human Microbiome Project Could Change the Future of Science and Medicine
Keep reading > The New York Times-Health: The Other Brain Also Deals With Many Woes
Keep reading > Guardian: Microbes Manipulate Your Mind
Keep reading > Parasite Turns Rats Into Zombies That Love Cats
Keep reading > TI Food and Nutrition: Gastrointestinal Health
Gut Microbes and Metabolic Dysfunction
The prevalence of obesity and the associated disorders metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes (T2D) have increased substantially worldwide over the last decades. Obesity increases risk for many other diseases such as atherosclerosis, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and certain cancers. Recent insight suggests that the intestinal microbial flora could play an important role in obesity and its related diseases.
View > Jeremy Nicholson's Gut Instincts: Researching Intestinal Bacteria
View > Improving Health by Targeting Gut Bacteria: A Q&A with Jeremy Nicholson
View > Gut Microbiome, Obesity, And Metabolic Dysfunction
View > Gut Microbe - Host Metabolic Interactions In Heath And Disease
View > Study Linking Gut Microbe Type With Diet Has Implications for Fighting GI Disorders
View > Gut Bacteria Could Cause Diabetes
View > Diabetes Is Characterised By Specific Intestinal Flora, Researchers Find
View > Type 2 Diabetes Breakthrough: Imbalance In Gut Bacteria Likely Cause
View > Type 2 Diabetes Revealed By Gut Bacteria
View > Study Links Gut Bacteria to Obesity, Diabetes
View > Gut Bacteria Linked To Obersity-Related Health Problems
View > Gut Bacteria Linked To Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome Identified
View > Gut Bacteria Increase Pre-Diabetic Risk
View > Gut Microorganisms Could Be Clue In Controlling Obesity Risk
Medical Ecology and the Human Microbiome
In a live chat session organised by Science-AAAS on 6 June 2012, George Weinstock - Associate Director of The Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, Principal Investigator in the NIH Human Microbiome Project and Leader of numerous metagenomics projects that study human disease - was asked an interesting question regarding whether the future of medicine lies in the ability to manipulate the human microbiome:
"Does it appear to you that this line of study could lead to a future where a patient with a bacterial infection, rather than being prescribed anti-biotics to kill all similar bacteria, could be given a balanced suite of microbiotics to ‘out-compete’ the offending bug?"
His reply is as follows:
"This is one of the grails of microbiome research, so the answer is definitely YES. There's much interest in looking at ecological approaches to manipulating the microbiome, instead of "nuking" it with antibiotics, and there are several reports in the Science Collection about this thinking. It is very intellectually exciting to see the marriage of ecological thinking with microbiology and human physiology. This is certainly one very fresh approach to the science of human disease, although I’m sure its been around for a while. We may not have had quite the extensive data sets or sophisticated thinking drawn from decades of developing ecological concepts. The Costello paper in the Science collection moves this approach along and provides some specific ideas for models of how we might understand ecological mechanisms in the body."
View > Science-AAAS Live Chat: The Bugs Inside Us
View > The Application of Ecological Theory Toward an Understanding of the Human Microbiome
View > Microbiota-Targeted Therapies: An Ecological Perspective
View > Gut microbiota: a potential new territory for drug targeting
View > The emerging medical ecology of the human gut microbiome
Animal Microbiome
Short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) have been the subject of much research over the past few decades. They play a vital role in maintenance of colonic integrity and metabolism. They are produced when dietary fibre is fermented by colonic bacteria. SCFAs are avidly absorbed in the colon, at the same time as sodium and water absorption and bicarbonate secretion. Once absorbed, SCFAs are used preferentially as fuel for colonic epithelial cells and have trophic effects on the epithelium.
Keep Reading > Recent advances in the use of fatty acids as supplements in pig diets: A review
View > Manipulation of commensal gut microbiota as a tool to decrease respiratory disease in swine
Earth Microbiome
The Earth Microbiome Project (EMP) is an initiative to collect natural samples and to analyze the microbial community around the globe.
Plant Microbiome
The soil is not just a single environment. To human eyes it may look like a brown layer of plant mush that fits into the rocks, but for a living environment it is highly complex. Not only must the bacteria that live within it share their space with small animals, protozoa, and fungi, but they also have to work around giant complexes of tree roots throughout the soil. These tree roots aren’t just static objects to be built around though, they take an active part in both influencing and shaping the microbial communities around them ...
Keep reading > Getting To The Root - Unearthing The Plant-Microbe Quid Pro Quo
Keep reading > Scientific American: Plant Microbes Help Them Wrest Nutrients From Soil
Keep reading > Microbiome Swapping Is The New And "Natural" Alternative To GMOs
Videos
Links to videos with contents related to microbial communities and their microbiomes.
Human Microbiome
Keep watching > TED Talk: Bonnie Bassler - How Bacteria "Talk"
Keep watching > TED Talk: Nathan Wolfe - What's Left To Explore?
Keep watching > TED Talk: Jonathan Eisen - Meet Your Microbes
Keep watching > TED Talk: Heribert Watzke -The Brain in Your Gut
Keep watching > TED Talk: Melissa Garren - The Sea We've Hardly Seen
Keep watching > TED Talk: Jessica Green - Are We Filtering The Wrong Microbes?
Keep watching > Microbeworld Video: David Relman - The Stability of the Human Microbiome
Earth Microbiome
Keep watching > TEDxNaperville: Rick Stevens - Earth Microbiome Project