Development of the Human Infant Intestinal Microbiota

By C. Palmer, E. Bik, Daniel B. DiGiulio, David A. Relman, Patrick O. Brown. PLoS Biology, 2007

2,904 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Almost immediately after a human being is born, so too is a new microbial ecosystem, one that resides in that person's gastrointestinal tract. Although it is a universal and integral part of human biology, the temporal progression of this process, the sources of the microbes that make up the ecosystem, how and why it varies from one infant to another, and how the composition of this ecosystem influences human physiology, development, and disease are still poorly understood. As a step toward systematically investigating these questions, we designed a microarray to detect and quantitate the small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU rRNA) gene sequences of most currently recognized species and taxonomic groups of bacteria. We used this microarray, along with sequencing of cloned libraries of PCR-amplified SSU rDNA, to profile the microbial communities in an average of 26 stool samples each from 14 healthy, full-term human infants, including a pair of dizygotic twins, beginning with the first stool after birth and continuing at defined intervals throughout the first year of life. To investigate possible origins of the infant microbiota, we also profiled vaginal and milk samples from most of the mothers, and stool samples from all of the mothers, most of the fathers, and two siblings. The composition and temporal patterns of the microbial communities varied widely from baby to baby. Despite considerable temporal variation, the distinct features of each baby's microbial community were recognizable for intervals of weeks to months. The strikingly parallel temporal patterns of the twins suggested that incidental environmental exposures play a major role in determining the distinctive characteristics of the microbial community in each baby. By the end of the first year of life, the idiosyncratic microbial ecosystems in each baby, although still distinct, had converged toward a profile characteristic of the adult gastrointestinal tract.

Subfields: Food Science, Molecular Biology, Nutrition and Dietetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3ed8faa21632422014c107c1c1121a392490915c

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Citations in the corpus

16S rRNA gene-based analysis of fecal microbiota from preterm infants with and without necrotizing enterocolitis (2009, background): “The initial colonization patterns in normal full-term infants are dependent on environmental influences such as mode of delivery and type of feeding (Gronlund et al., 1999; Harmsen et al., 2000; Penders et al., 2006; Palmer et al., 2007).”
The gut microbiome shapes intestinal immune responses during health and disease (2009, neutral): “How is such a complex microbial network assembled after birth? A recent stud”
The Intestinal Microbiome in Early Life: Health and Disease (2014, background): “The use of these primers led to the erroneous conclusion that Bifidobacteria were an unimportant bacterial group in the infant intestine (25).”
The Impact of the Gut Microbiota on Human Health: An Integrative View (2012, neutral): “Early colonizers are generally aerotolerant, as the gut initially contains oxygen, and then are replaced by anaerobes that are typical of the adult gut microbiota (Palmer et al., 2007).”
Individuality in gut microbiota composition is a complex polygenic trait shaped by multiple environmental and host genetic factors (2010, background): “In humans, this period of succession persists until 18–24mo of age, when the gut microbiota attains its “adult-like” composition and begins to behave as a highly individualized climax community (1, 27, 28).”
Effects of Gut Microbes on Nutrient Absorption and Energy Regulation (2012, background): “Current evidence suggests that the gastrointestinal microbiota is established within the first few years of life in a process that is influenced by a variety of host (genetics) and external factors (diet, environmental exposures).(4,5) In the newborn, most bacterial species are acquired during the b”
The first 1000 cultured species of the human gastrointestinal microbiota (2014, background): “…one other species of the Verrucomicrobia — Prosthecobacter fluviatilis — has been detected in the study of bacteria of a patient with ileal pouch (McLaughlin et al., 2010), while sequences classified within this genus were detected in the study of the microbiota of infants (Palmer et al., 2007).”
Experimental and analytical tools for studying the human microbiome (2011, result): “This pattern may be similar to the rapid changes that are observed in the bacterial microbiota early in lif”