What does a healthy forest look like? A seemingly thriving, verdant wilderness can conceal signs of pollution, disease or invasive species. Only an ecologist can spot problems that could jeopardize the long-term well-being of the entire ecosystem.
Microbiome researchers grapple with the same problem. Disruptions to the community of microbes living in the human gut can contribute to the risk and severity of a host of medical conditions. Accordingly, many scientists have become accomplished bacterial naturalists, labouring to catalogue the startling diversity of these commensal communities. Some 500–1,000 bacterial species reside in each person’s intestinal tract, alongside an undetermined number of viruses, fungi and other microbes.
Rapid advances in DNA sequencing technology have accelerated the identification of these bacteria, allowing researchers to create ‘field guides’ to the species in the human gut. “We’re starting to get a feeling of who the players are,” says Jeroen Raes, a bioinformatician at VIB, a life-sciences institute in Ghent, Belgium. “But there is still considerable ‘dark matter’.”
Currently, these field guides are of limited use in distinguishing a healthy microbiome from an unhealthy one. Part of the problem is the potentially vast differences between the microbiomes of apparently healthy people. These differences arise through a complex combination of environmental, genetic and lifestyle factors. This means that relatively subtle differences can have a disproportionate role in determining whether an individual is relatively healthy or at increased risk of developing disorders such as diabetes. Understanding the clinical implications of those differences is also a challenge, given the extensive interactions between these microbes, and with their host, as well as the conditions in which that individual lives. “One person’s healthy microbiome might not be healthy in another context — it’s a tricky concept,” says Ruth Ley, a microbial ecologist at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany.
Researchers such as Ley are trying to better understand the forces that shape the human gut microbiome — both in the modern era, and across evolutionary history. The emerging picture indicates that even if there is no one healthy microbiome, there are ample opportunities for our lifestyle to interfere with the proper function of these complex commensal communities. And to understand how the breakdown of these ecosystems drives disease, researchers will need to move beyond microbial field guides and begin dissecting how these species interact with their hosts and with each other.
by Michael Eisenstein, Nature | Read more:
Image: Antoine Doré
Microbiome researchers grapple with the same problem. Disruptions to the community of microbes living in the human gut can contribute to the risk and severity of a host of medical conditions. Accordingly, many scientists have become accomplished bacterial naturalists, labouring to catalogue the startling diversity of these commensal communities. Some 500–1,000 bacterial species reside in each person’s intestinal tract, alongside an undetermined number of viruses, fungi and other microbes.
Rapid advances in DNA sequencing technology have accelerated the identification of these bacteria, allowing researchers to create ‘field guides’ to the species in the human gut. “We’re starting to get a feeling of who the players are,” says Jeroen Raes, a bioinformatician at VIB, a life-sciences institute in Ghent, Belgium. “But there is still considerable ‘dark matter’.”
Currently, these field guides are of limited use in distinguishing a healthy microbiome from an unhealthy one. Part of the problem is the potentially vast differences between the microbiomes of apparently healthy people. These differences arise through a complex combination of environmental, genetic and lifestyle factors. This means that relatively subtle differences can have a disproportionate role in determining whether an individual is relatively healthy or at increased risk of developing disorders such as diabetes. Understanding the clinical implications of those differences is also a challenge, given the extensive interactions between these microbes, and with their host, as well as the conditions in which that individual lives. “One person’s healthy microbiome might not be healthy in another context — it’s a tricky concept,” says Ruth Ley, a microbial ecologist at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany.Researchers such as Ley are trying to better understand the forces that shape the human gut microbiome — both in the modern era, and across evolutionary history. The emerging picture indicates that even if there is no one healthy microbiome, there are ample opportunities for our lifestyle to interfere with the proper function of these complex commensal communities. And to understand how the breakdown of these ecosystems drives disease, researchers will need to move beyond microbial field guides and begin dissecting how these species interact with their hosts and with each other.
by Michael Eisenstein, Nature | Read more:
Image: Antoine Doré
[ed. Probably one of the most exciting fields of study these days. The influence of the microbiome on health (mental and physical) appears to be amazingly important (if not enormous) and we're just beginning to understand why. In other news: Powerful antibiotics discovered using AI (Nature).]
