Quote:

 

Pollard, senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, delivered a presentation titled "Estimating Taxonomic and Functional Diversity in Shotgun Metagenomes" during an invited session focused on statistics, the microbiome and human health.

"While we are only just beginning to understand the complex roles microbes play in human biology, it is clear specific changes in microbial flora are associated with--and sometimes cause or cure--disease in the host," said Pollard while explaining her research focus. "Some of the best-supported links are with autoimmune diseases, which are on the rise in the United States, perhaps due to antibiotic use and lack of exposure to a diverse collection of microbes during childhood. This 'hygiene hypothesis' suggests that health risks not attributable to human genetics and behavior may stem from differences in microbiome composition between individuals."

What's more, a given microbial species can share less than 50% of the same genes when found in two people. These differences track with functional capabilities of the microbial communities, including genes related to sugar metabolism, biosynthesis and two-component systems. "Two people with the exact same species of bacteria in their guts could experience very different interactions with these bacteria because different strains simply are not doing the same thing," said Pollard.

Quote:

 

perhaps due to antibiotic use and lack of exposure to a diverse collection of microbes during childhood.