New technologies to describe gut microbiota In the twentieth century our knowledge of the gut microbiota was constrained by the ability to describe and study the biological functions of less than a hundred cultivable bacteria (Finegold et al., 1983). The species we described until year 2000 were also the most abundant ones, and given the special attention of funding agencies towards pathogens, we fundamentally ignored the genome to functions relation for the vast majority of our commensal, except in the case of a handful of bacterial species used in food production. In the beginning of this century a limited number of studies cloning and sequencing libraries of 16S rRNA started opening a window with a view on the astonishing diversity of gut microbiota. Despite their importance these initial, non cultivation based, diversity studies were limited by the costs and complexity of Sanger-sequencing methods. In the past 10 years the picture of our gut microflora has rapidly passed from black and white to a surprising explosion of bright colors, thanks to the advent of Next Generation Sequencing technologies (NGS). The findings presented in this report emphasize the need to sample humans across the globe with a variety of extreme diets and life-styles, including relatively ancestral hunter-gatherer lifestyles, in order to provide new insights into the limits of variation within a host species and the possibility that our microbes, in coevolving with our bodies and our cultures, have helped shape our physiological differences and environmental adaptations. The identification of worldwide variation in the signatures of adaptations to dietary changes in the gut microbiota of human populations with different dietary habits may shed light not only on the evolutionary history of our species, but also on the mechanisms that underlie many autoimmune diseases in modern human populations. The worldwide variation in the human microbiome is a virtually untapped goldmine of tremendous importance to improve our health, have the benefits of living a modern life without losing the beneficial flora developed from thousands of years of human evolution. We expect that in the future the knowledge of the composition of the indigenous microflora, or of a microflora that retains peculiar specialization for the extraction of certain nutrients, could lead interventions in developing countries which aim at alleviating malnutrition while taking the host microbiome into account.

Genomics application for the developing world_ The effect of diet on gut microbiota in human living in different environments: a metagenomic approach / C. De Filippo; D. Cavalieri; P. Lionetti. - STAMPA. - (2012), pp. 279-294. [10.1007/978-1-4614-2182-5]

Genomics application for the developing world_ The effect of diet on gut microbiota in human living in different environments: a metagenomic approach

DE FILIPPO, CARLOTTA;CAVALIERI, DUCCIO;LIONETTI, PAOLO
2012

Abstract

New technologies to describe gut microbiota In the twentieth century our knowledge of the gut microbiota was constrained by the ability to describe and study the biological functions of less than a hundred cultivable bacteria (Finegold et al., 1983). The species we described until year 2000 were also the most abundant ones, and given the special attention of funding agencies towards pathogens, we fundamentally ignored the genome to functions relation for the vast majority of our commensal, except in the case of a handful of bacterial species used in food production. In the beginning of this century a limited number of studies cloning and sequencing libraries of 16S rRNA started opening a window with a view on the astonishing diversity of gut microbiota. Despite their importance these initial, non cultivation based, diversity studies were limited by the costs and complexity of Sanger-sequencing methods. In the past 10 years the picture of our gut microflora has rapidly passed from black and white to a surprising explosion of bright colors, thanks to the advent of Next Generation Sequencing technologies (NGS). The findings presented in this report emphasize the need to sample humans across the globe with a variety of extreme diets and life-styles, including relatively ancestral hunter-gatherer lifestyles, in order to provide new insights into the limits of variation within a host species and the possibility that our microbes, in coevolving with our bodies and our cultures, have helped shape our physiological differences and environmental adaptations. The identification of worldwide variation in the signatures of adaptations to dietary changes in the gut microbiota of human populations with different dietary habits may shed light not only on the evolutionary history of our species, but also on the mechanisms that underlie many autoimmune diseases in modern human populations. The worldwide variation in the human microbiome is a virtually untapped goldmine of tremendous importance to improve our health, have the benefits of living a modern life without losing the beneficial flora developed from thousands of years of human evolution. We expect that in the future the knowledge of the composition of the indigenous microflora, or of a microflora that retains peculiar specialization for the extraction of certain nutrients, could lead interventions in developing countries which aim at alleviating malnutrition while taking the host microbiome into account.
2012
9781461421818
Genomics application for the developing world
279
294
C. De Filippo; D. Cavalieri; P. Lionetti
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Utilizza questo identificatore per citare o creare un link a questa risorsa: https://hdl.handle.net/2158/772609
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