US project to map role of bacteria in human health

WASHINGTON - Some patients fail to respond to treatment for intestinal infections perhaps because they are lacking certain protective bacteria, found in the human gut.

Our gastrointestinal tracts are teeming with trillions of bacteria, where they make essential amino acids and vitamins, help regulate our immune systems and break down starches and proteins.

Unfortunately, the interaction of man and bacteria is a grey area for scientists, who have surprisingly little idea about this symbiotic relationship, reports the Telegraph.

Thanks to the Human Microbiome Project, all this is about to change. An ambitious research exercise funded by the US, it could have implications equal in importance to the Human Genome Project that preceded it.

The project is dedicated to sequencing the genomes, the genetic content of the 900 or so species of microbes found in our bodies that scientists have so far been able to culture in the lab.

Using samples from 300 volunteers, the researchers hope to determine whether we share a core microbial genome, or ‘microbiome,’ and pin down the ways in which changes in the microbiome are correlated with human health and disease.

Before the project started, only 20 of the 900 species had been sequenced. But two years in, progress is speeding up, and in May researchers published the genetic secrets of another 178. The remaining 700 should be completed within the next two years.

As Professor George Weinstock, the geneticist at the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, explains, millions of years of evolution have thrown man and microbe together to work for the wellbeing of both.

“We should no longer think of these organisms in isolation,” says Weinstock. “They’re more like additional organs of our bodies.”

“The actual sequencing of the organism itself is immediately useful and revealing,” says Weinstock.

“Straight away, we get a feeling for the organism. We get to see which genes are present and learn about the proteins it makes, and how it might interact with our bodies or other microbes.”

Karen Nelson of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, US, participant in the Human Microbiome Project, said: “We expect to see important developments in the next few years against a variety of cancers, particularly of the digestive tract, as well as Crohn’s disease, psoriasis and stillbirths due to bacterial vaginosis.”