478: Babies Bear Bacterial Birthright

This episode: How family members share gut microbes across multiple generations!

Download Episode (7.3 MB, 10.7 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Dyozetapapillomavirus 1

Takeaways

Our gut’s microbial communities can greatly influence our health, for good or bad. The makeup of these communities can be influenced by many factors, including genetics, health status, diet, and other aspects of the environment we live in. We’ve learned a lot about this topic recently, but there’s a lot more we still don’t understand.

In this study, gut microbe samples from individuals spanning multiple generations in the same families were compared, to see how much influence family relationships and cohabitation could have on the gut communities. Both genetic relationship and living together had influences on which gut microbes different people shared.

 

Journal Paper:
Valles-Colomer M, Bacigalupe R, Vieira-Silva S, Suzuki S, Darzi Y, Tito RY, Yamada T, Segata N, Raes J, Falony G. 2022. Variation and transmission of the human gut microbiota across multiple familial generations. 1. Nat Microbiol 7:87–96.

 

Other interesting stories:

• Simple modification to interesting bacteria make them excrete nitrogen fertilizer
• Making carbon dioxide into useful chemicals with bacteria

 

Email questions or comments to bacteriofiles at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening!

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