"Humans evolved with their microbiomes"
—The Conversation
Ruth Ley, Deputy Spokesperson of the CMFI and Director of the MPI for Biology, has published an article in The Conversation together with Taichi Suzuki (MPI of Biology).
In the article, "Humans evolved with their microbiomes," Ley and Suzuki describe that bacteria have not only evolved in parallel with their early human hosts. Settling in different parts of the world and the respective adaptation of hosts and bacteria to changing environmental conditions is only one aspect of bacterial evolution, they say. Some of these bacteria have become dependent on their host, limiting their survivability over time to the human gut.
Ley and Suzuki are referring to their recent study, published in the journal Science, which they conducted in collaboration with researchers from the Cluster of Excellence CMFI and the University of Tübingen's Tropical Medicine Institute.
For the study, the research team analyzed the gut microbiomes and genomes of 1225 individuals in Europe, Asia and Africa with partner organizations in Vietnam and Gabon.
Contact
Prof. Ruth E. Ley, Ph.D.
Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen
Director, Department of Microbiome Science
Max-Planck-Ring 5
72076 Tübingen, Germany
Email: rley
@tuebingen.mpg.de
Phone: +49 7071 601 450
Website: https://leylab.com/
Leon Kokkoliadis
Public Relations
Tel: +49 7071 29-74707
E-Mail: leon.kokkoliadis@uni-tuebingen.de
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