Biodiversity is more important than individual microbes for disease prevention.
This is the implication of new peer-reviewed research published in the journal ‘Science’ by a team at the University of Oxford.
"Protective communities block the growth of harmful pathogens by consuming nutrients that the pathogen needs."
The team wanted to find out more about how the microbiome offered protection against disease-causing microbes. To do this, they tested strains individually, and in combination.
They observed that individual bacteria had a very poor effect on restricting pathogens, but large communities of microbe limited the spread by a magnitude of one thousand.
"Our work supports the general hypothesis that a more diverse microbiome can carry health benefits."
Why is this important? Well, very simply, it stresses the need to take the focus of microbiome research away from individual microbes.
What do you think?
