MICR 302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Human Microbiome Project, Lactobacillus Acidophilus, Gut Flora
16 Mar 2018
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Document Summary
Human gut has ~100 trillion microbes and more importantly 10^30 genomes. We have evolved with microbes, meaning that a number of our functions are carried out by bacterial genes (ie. digestion, cofactor produciton, ect. ) Characterization is hard only know about 5,000 species. Only a small percentage can be cultured. Use 16s ssu rrna sequencing to determine phylogeny (thanks to carl woese, George fox and norm pace) because all microorganisms will have this! See little di erence sometimes within a species, but major di erences between species. Silva = rrna database > possible thanks to the hgp and the development of high throughput, cheap sequencing. 1st looked at by albert d derlein who proposed that lactobacillus protected the vagina from staph infection. Turns out, this is because lactobacillus generate lactic acid which maintains a low ph and therefore prevents growth of pathogens like staph.
