A raw survey in the journalScienceexamining the genetic science of the bacterium living in the bowel of African great apes and people from Connecticut supports the idea that our microbiome has been evolving with us , despite bacteria - affecting changes in environment , diet , geographics , and for humans , medicine use .
Using fecal samples , an international team of scientists led by researcher from the University of Texas at Austin created evolutionary trees for three different chemical group of bacteria that make up one - fifth part of the human gut microbiome , tracing bacterial metal money back zillion of eld . They found that our bowel microbiome can be trace all the way back to before the human species existed , to the common ancestor that both humans and not bad anthropoid acquire from million of years ago . Gut microbes have evolved in analog with the different species , they say , with genetic splits in bacterium come at the same time as Gorilla gorilla diverged from other hominids about 15.6 million years ago ( which is much early than some previous estimation ) and humans burst from chimps and bonobos roughly 5.3 million years ago .
This means that though our environment does affect our microbiome ( eatingless fibre , for instance , has been shown to change the bacterial makeup , as hasusing deodourant ) , genetic science play a major role in the types of species we play master of ceremonies to .
There ’s potential difference that some of our bacterial lineage may be share with species even farther back in the evolutionary Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , the researchers say . “ peradventure we can delineate our bowel bug back to our mutual ancestor with all mammalian , all reptiles , all amphibians , perhaps even all vertebrates , ” study author Andrew Moellerpostulates . This enquiry does n’t plunge quite so deep , but next studies might explore those issues .
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