the Powers of Your Gut Microbiome
Introduction
The human gastrointestinal (GI) tract encompasses a dynamic community of organisms called the gut microbiota. The digestive tract itself is a “center point of the central nervous system, hormonal system and immune system” [30]. These microbiomes in the gut play a vital role in our bodies and in our day to day lives by obtaining the responsibility of controlling a balance of our emotions and bacteria, which may contribute to diseases. The amount of microorganisms that inhabit the GI tract has been estimated to be greater than 1014 [7,12]. This encompasses up to 100 times more bacterial cells than the amount of genomic content as the human genome [12]. Due to the large number of bacterial cells in the body, the host and the microorganisms inhabiting it have the greatest density of bacteria found in the body. As a result of this, it is often referred to as a ‘superprganism’ [11,12]. Yet, 70 million people from across the world suffer from some sort of digestive issue and know minimal about the roles and interactions the GI tract has with the rest of the body [13]. This suggests the necessity of understanding the development and composition of the human GI microbiota, and its need for mechanistic studies that focus on the interactions between the gut and the rest…show more content… Its significance and roles to the biology and development of humans has been proven worldwide as more research is being done on the human microbiota. Researchers learned the gut microbiota and the host have co-evolved over thousands of years to form a mutually beneficial relationship, which is pivotal in maintaining homeostasis [7,23]. There has a been a lot of speculation about how exactly the gut microbiome and host immune system influence each other during certain diseases, but a function for the microbiota in a vast number of diseases has become steadily
