BIOL 371 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Gastric Mucosa, Human Microbiota, Duodenum
Document Summary
Biol 371 lecture 18: microbial symbiosis with humans. All sites on a human that contain microorganisms are part of a microbiome. A microbiome is a functional collection of different microbes in a particular environmental system (e. g. the human microbiome) Scientists use the term microbiota to describe all the microbes in a microhabitat (eg. skin microbiota) Different microhabitats support different microbes, so the skin will have very different microbes than the mouth. There are approximately 1013 microbes in the human microbiome living in complex communities. Heavily colonized body regions: gastrointestinal tract, oral cavity and airways, urogenital tracts, the skin. Future benefits of knowing about the diversity and function of the human microbiome include: the development of biomarkers for predicting predisposition to disease (probability of a disease developing, personalized drug therapies and probiotics. We are currently in the early days, but studies have revealed that there are complex interactions between host and its microbiota.
