Biologists have began to study gut bacteria in order to study the evolutionary history of mammals. This was done in hopes of following gut bacteria all the way back to the to carnivorous creatures 100 million years ago. Gut bacteria is considered microbes, and they have been found to be co-evolving with humans for a long time. They have been found to train our immune systems to fight pathogens and guide development of intestines. Andrew Moeller, a Fellow in UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, decided to study feces of different species. Moeller and a couple colleagues obtained feces from gorrillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and people. Then they isolated and amplified the DNA of bacteria in order to study it. They found three families of bacteria that composed about 20% of the human gut. The bacteria found are Bacteroidaceae, Bifidobacteriaceae, and Lachnospiraceae. Lachnospiraceae was found to be transferred between host species due to their ability to grow spores and survive outside of a host. Bacteroidaceae and Bifodobacteriaceae were found in both the apes and humans, with more diversity in the ape species.
Their study concluded:
"Once we calibrated the molecular clock, we were able to date the split of human and chimp bacteria at around 5.3 million years ago, and the human-gorilla gut bacteria split at around 15.6 million years ago, which are roughly in line with what we know from fossil and genomic data of the hosts," Moeller said. "It is one more line of evidence that gut bacteria have cospeciated with humans."
No comments:
Post a Comment