THE ROLE OF MICROBIOMES IN HUMAN HEALTH AND DISEASE

Abstract

The human microbiome consists of billions of bacteria that constitute a complicated ecosystem that exists in various organs of the human body. It is quite important in maintaining the health of the host and influencing the growth of disease.  The current advancement of the sequencing methods has enabled full profiling of microbial communities of the belly, skin, mouth, vagina, and nose.  The microbiome plays a significant role in personalized medicine because these various populations of microorganisms facilitate the regulation of the immune system, metabolism and pathogen tolerance.In our work, we compared and estimated the number, diversity, and the distribution of functional genes of microbes across the various parts of the body using a metagenomic technique.  Such key variables as the Shannon and Simpson indices of diversity, Firmicutes / Bacteroidetes ratio, the levels of the short-chain fatty acids, and abundance of microbes prior to exposure to antibiotics were considered.  We also examined how probiotics and categories of genes affect the functionality of the microbes.We observed that the microbial composition of body parts had very diverse compositions. The most diversity and metabolic ability were in the gut microbiome.  It is also interesting to mention that the structure of the microbiota was connected with the host factors such as BMI or probiotic use.  There was a considerable decrease in the number of microbes in the body due to antibiotic treatment but a rise in the number of SCFAs in the probiotic patients. This argues with the notion that altering your food can enhance the functionality of the microbes.The article demonstrates the centrality of the microbiome in diagnosis and treatment as well as the alteration of phenotype in the host.  In further studies, longitudinal and multi-omics methods should be conducted to understand more on the interaction between microbes and the host and in sustaining clinical interventions on the basis of microbiome research.