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Tackling the various myths within the field of microbiome research

  • September 27, 2023
  • Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
  • Category: DPN Topics
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Tackling the various myths within the field of microbiome research

Subject :Science and Technology

Section: Biotechnology

Context:

  • According to an assessment published in Nature Microbiology, it is a myth that the microbes in our bodies outnumber our own cells 10 to one.

Details of the assessment study:

  • Done by researchers from Israel and Canada.
  • A 70 kg “reference man” to have 38 trillion bacterial cells and 30 trillion human cells.

The following are some claims that the assessment checked:

  •  Scientists had described and speculated on the benefits of bacteria inhabiting the gut, such as Escerichia coli and Bifidobacteria, as early as the late 19th and early 20th centuries itself.
  • Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel laureate in medicine, was credited with the naming of the field in 2001. According to a June 2017 paper, Whipps J.M., Lewis K., and Cooke R.C. had used the term in 1988 to describe a community of microbes.
  • The absolute microbial cells in one gram of human faeces have been exaggerated 10-to-100 fold. According to the authors, the actual number is around 10^10 to 10^12.
  • It weighed about 200 grams.
  • Mothers don’t pass their microbiomes to their children at birth. Some microorganisms are directly transferred during birth but they constitute a small fraction of the human microbiota.
  • A microbe and its metabolite can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Diseases have been correlated with changes in the composition of the microbiome.
  • While different bacteria in the human microbiome perform some common important functions, many functions are the preserve of a few species.
  • Sequencing of microbes is biased from collecting samples to storing them, even in the choice of software to analyse sequence data.

What are microbiomes?

  • The microbiome is the community of microorganisms (such as fungi, bacteria and viruses) that exists in a particular environment. In humans, the term is often used to describe the microorganisms that live in or on a particular part of the body, such as the skin or gastrointestinal tract.

Source: TH

Science and tech Tackling the various myths within the field of microbiome research

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