AUTHOR=Quercia Sara , Candela Marco , Giuliani Cristina , Turroni Silvia , Luiselli Donata , Rampelli Simone , Brigidi Patrizia , Franceschi Claudio , Bacalini Maria Giulia , Garagnani Paolo , Pirazzini Chiara TITLE=From lifetime to evolution: timescales of human gut microbiota adaptation JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology VOLUME=5 YEAR=2014 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2014.00587 DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2014.00587 ISSN=1664-302X ABSTRACT=

Human beings harbor gut microbial communities that are essential to preserve human health. Molded by the human genome, the gut microbiota (GM) is an adaptive component of the human superorganisms that allows host adaptation at different timescales, optimizing host physiology from daily life to lifespan scales and human evolutionary history. The GM continuously changes from birth up to the most extreme limits of human life, reconfiguring its metagenomic layout in response to daily variations in diet or specific host physiological and immunological needs at different ages. On the other hand, the microbiota plasticity was strategic to face changes in lifestyle and dietary habits along the course of the recent evolutionary history, that has driven the passage from Paleolithic hunter-gathering societies to Neolithic agricultural farmers to modern Westernized societies.