Microbial universe within us
Occasionally harmful microbes invade the body and cause diseases.The human body is teeming with life, harboring friendly microbes.
We are what we eat. In fact, our bugs are also what we eat. There is a unique universe of microorganisms in our body residing on skin and inside our gut. The number of bacteria in our gut actually exceeds the number of cells in human body by 10 fold. This complex ecosystem plays immense role for maintaining good health in individuals. They are called commensals. The gut microbial community is effectively an "organ within an organ", says microbiologist Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University at St. Louis. The mix of microbes inside affects how we metabolize food and probably has substantial impact on our health. Scientists observed how the teeming tide of microbes inside the body plays an essential role in human health and how it might be fine tuned to address illnesses such as diabetes, obesity and inflammatory bowel disease. The kinds of microbes in our intestine are affected by our dietary preferences. The intestinal tracts of individuals who typically ate a high fat; high protein diet harbor a high number of one kind of bacteria. On the other hand, those who favored carbohydrates and vegetables had higher number of another type. " This is really interesting and tantalizing science. It is sort of like you have the carnivore gut and herbivore gut." says Weinstock, a genetics professor at Washington University at St. Louis and a leader of the ongoing Human Microbiome Project. Previous research had shown that people can be grouped into different categories by their intestinal bacteria. In 2010, one study revealed the differences in gut microflora between children in Europe and rural Africa, who have a markedly different diet. Although diet controls this flora inside the body, it comes to this stabilized position gradually from the birth. "Everyone is born sterile", says Andrew Gewirtz of Emory University, noting that colonization starts during birth. The flora depends on the method of delivery of the baby (vaginal versus caesarian), place of delivery (home or hospital), maternal diet etc and, later, exposure to antibiotics and steroids. Moreover, intestinal bacteria patterns change during stress and diseases. The harmful bacteria or pathogens compete with the good ones and if their number is large, they eventually win over the good ones. At times of stress and adverse body conditions, the pathogens emerged and may cause problems in digestion. Mostly, they come from the intake of food and drinks, especially when these are stale and contaminated. Indeed, the interaction between the friendly bacteria and the pathogens are of immense interest to the scientists due to their effect on human health. The beneficial bacteria help in digestion, producing vitamins for the host (such as biotin and vitamin K) and even producing hormones to direct the host to store fats. However, the harmful ones are involved in developing diseases like diabetes, obesity etc. As discussed earlier, the diet is responsible for the patterns of microbes in individuals with people on high protein-fat diets tending to have more the type of bacteria called Bacteroides, and others, the vegetarians, having more microbes from the genus Prevotella. And everyone is different in terms of the composition of their microflora, "It's almost sort of like a fingerprint", Weinstock says. It is a curious, mutually convenient relationship that has emerged over thousands of years between the tiny bugs and their flesh-and-blood hosts and they influence host's activity and health even by turning on or off certain genes in them and they are unique. Recently, scientists are taking genomic approaches to analyze the gut microbe genes and already completed a catalogue of some 3.3 million human gut microbe genes. More study with the genes will, hopefully, help us to get a better insight of the interaction between the microbes and human and how they are associated with our health. They, indeed, are our friends, especially, the good ones.
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