Gut Microflora

INTRODUCTION

What is Microflora?

Bacterial flora that encompasses of a wide variety of microbes in a community that lives in the body and maintains an ecological relationship with the host. Between them, there is a mutual relationship and both the host and the microbe benefit from it. (1, 2). In humans, there is a large is a large eco-system of microbes and they have a tremendous influence on the human body, as research would attest. According to research, they have been linked to many conditions like obesity, diabetes and even diseases like cancer (1). In 2008, the human Microbiome project was introduced which designed studies to help understand the direct implications of the micro flora in the human body. They believed that the micro flora

Human gut evolution can be looked up to as the mutualistic relationship with the enormous microbial community that resides in human gastrointestinal tract (GIT); this ecosystem is better known as Gut microbiota (GM).4 The number of bacteria thriving in the gut region of the human body has been estimated to exceed 1014. A recent study estimates that the ratio of human cells of bacterial cells is approximately 1:1, as a result the vast number of micro-organism in the body and the host collectively are often referred as

He discovered notable differences in microbes between these two habitats. He further also compared samples from healthy & diseased individuals in both of these sites and thus started a pioneering work in understanding the location and health specific diversity of microbiota in the human gastrointestinal tract.3 The term ‘human Microbiome” was coined by Joshua Lederberg in 2001 to denote the genetic pool of all the gut microbiota and ever since there has been a quest amongst scientists to understand what microbiome could in fact be referred to as