It’s not a stretch to say that we live in a microbial world. Microbes can make us sick (as they are demonstrating right now), lead the way for medicines like targeted therapeutics and probiotics, and are crucial to almost every biological ecosystem. But there is much we don’t understand about them, so one group of researchers has taken a deeper look at one of the world’s most compact and dense bacterial hot spots: the human mouth.
In a study published last month in Genome Biology, a team of Harvard-led researchers used a recently developed technique combining state-of-the-art genetic sequencing and analysis to get an up-close look at the mouth and the ecosystem of microbial communities living within it, including those that cannot be cultured.
A diet rich in healthy and plant-based foods is linked with the presence and abundance of certain gut microbes that are also associated with a lower risk of developing conditions such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, according to recent results from a large-scale international study that was co–senior authored by Andrew T. Chan, from Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). The report appears in Nature Medicine.
“This study demonstrates a clear association between specific microbial species in the gut, certain foods, and risk of some common diseases,” says Chan, a gastroenterologist, chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at MGH, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “We hope to be able to use this information to help people avoid serious health problems by changing their diet to personalize their gut microbiome.”