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Applying Advanced In Vitro Culturing Technology to Study the Human Gut Microbiota
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The shrinking human gut microbiome.

Andrew H Moeller1

  • 1Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, University of California, Berkeley, 2538 Channing Way, Berkley, CA 94720, United States.

Current Opinion in Microbiology
|May 2, 2017
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Human gut bacteria diversity has significantly decreased since human-chimpanzee divergence, accelerating with modern lifestyles. This loss, particularly in industrialized societies, may elevate risks for infections and metabolic disorders.

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Area of Science:

  • Microbiology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Human Health

Background:

  • Mammals host diverse gut bacteria crucial for host systems.
  • Recent studies show a significant loss of gut bacterial diversity in humans compared to ancestral primates.
  • This reduction is linked to evolutionary history and modern lifestyles.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the extent of gut bacterial diversity loss in humans.
  • To understand the evolutionary timeline and contributing factors to this bacterial depauperation.
  • To assess the potential health implications of reduced gut microbiome diversity.

Main Methods:

  • Comparative metagenomic analysis of human and primate gut microbiomes.
  • Phylogenetic analysis to trace bacterial diversity changes over evolutionary time.
  • Correlation studies linking lifestyle factors to microbiome composition.

Main Results:

  • Human gut bacterial diversity has substantially declined since the human-chimpanzee split.
  • Bacterial depauperation has accelerated with modern, industrialized lifestyles.
  • Humans in industrialized societies exhibit the lowest gut bacterial diversity among studied primates.

Conclusions:

  • The loss of gut bacteria represents a significant evolutionary event for humans.
  • Modern lifestyles are a major driver of ongoing gut microbiome reduction.
  • This diminished diversity may predispose humans to increased risks of infections, autoimmune diseases, and metabolic syndrome.