The Human Microbiome: The Extraordinary Biology of the Microbes that Live in and on Us

Martin Goldberg

Department of Life Sciences, Birmingham City University, United Kingdom

Dr. Martin Goldberg, Department of Life Sciences, Birmingham City University, United Kingdom.

Keywords: Microbiome; Psychoactive Molecules; Phylogenetics

Abstract

It seems that not a week goes by without a new finding being published, claiming how the microorganisms that live within and on us, affect different facets of our health. Perhaps most encouraging is the growing recognition by clinicians of the role of the microbiome in the development of, and protection from some debilitating or even fatal diseases such as cancer, diabetes and numerous inflammatory diseases (see for example, news of the recent knighthood for Prof Mel Greaves who has demonstrated a possible role for the microbiome in the development of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) in children [1]). The microbiome is the term we use to describe the entire population of microorganisms that live within and on our bodies. This brief article explores how we arrived at our current understanding of the human microbiome and touches on some of the many diseases that have been shown to be influenced by alterations in its composition.
Our ability to study the microbiome has only recently become possible, thanks to two critical innovations and discoveries: Next Generation DNA sequencing technology (NGS) and the use of 16S rRNA DNA sequence as a taxonomic tool. Until the advent of the 21^st century, we were constrained by the use of traditional microbiological tools such as culture media and microscopy to explore the microbiota living in our gastrointestinal, respiratory, genitourinary tracts and skin.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).