

with those in less developed settings, she said. One study compared the composition of gut microflora in young children in U.S. While the mature microbiome is relatively stable throughout adulthood, its diversity is susceptible to fluctuations and decreases as individuals get older, Fraser said. Much of the initial research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Microbiome Project ( HMP) has been focused on trying to understand what happens to these communities over the course of a human lifetime, Fraser said.Įarly in life, the development of microbiome diversity is critically important for the maturation of the immune system, which learns to distinguish our microbial partners as “self” and not invaders. Scientists are beginning to understand that this is a carefully orchestrated homeostasis. As conditions along the GI track change, so do the numbers and types of microorganisms present there. The microbiota across individuals is far more diverse than the diversity in the human genome across individuals.įraser studies the human gastrointestinal tract. Calculating genome size and gene density, there are at least 100 times more genes than in the human genome.” And, she said, each of us seems to carry a unique microbial fingerprint.

“We’re hosts to probably more than 100 trillion microbial cells, ten times the number of human cells. “Every surface and cavity of the human body is colonized by these complex communities of organisms,” said Fraser. “Our microbiome, particularly in the gut, contributes to the digestion of our food, provides energy for our metabolism, and makes a number of essential vitamins and other bioactive compounds,” she said. We and our microbes have coevolved and this coevolution has created an ecosystem that mutually benefits both organism and host, said Fraser. Fraser, Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the Maryland School of Medicine and a member of the AAAS Board of Directors, opened the discussion with an introduction to microbiome research. What are the ethical and social implications of this ecosystem? How do we think about ourselves in light of it? How do the research techniques for studying these micro-organisms shape our perceptions of both the science and its meaning? These are a few of the questions addressed at a DoSER symposium, “ The Human Microbiome: Implications of the Microcosm Within Us,” that was held at the AAAS Annual Meeting in February 2015.Ĭlaire M. SchellerĪ thriving ecosystem exists in and on us, and it is made up of micro-organisms whose genetic material outnumbers human genes.
