Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, are poorly understood disorders affecting the intestinal tract. The current model for disease suggests that genetically susceptible patients develop intolerance to gut microflora, and chronic inflammation develops as a result of environmental insults. Although interest has mainly focused on studying genetic variants and ...

The bacterial flora of marine animals collected at depths of 570 to 2,446 m was examined for population size and generic composition, and the barotolerant characteristics of selected bacterial isolates were determined. Total numbers of culturable, aerobic, heterotrophic bacteria were found to be low in animals collected at the greatest ocean depths sampled in this study. Vibrio spp. were predom...

The challenge for the modern health care system is to fight against the increasing prevalence of atopic disease. The introduction of scientifically composed probiotic functional foods for prophylactic or therapeutic purposes could be one solution. Probiotics are live microbial food supplements or components of bacteria which have beneficial effects on human health. Specific strains have been de...

The human microbiome has demonstrated an importance for the health and functioning in living individuals. However, the fate of the microbiome after death is less understood. In addition to a better understanding of microbe-mediated decomposition processes, postmortem succession of human-associated microbial communities has been suggested as a possible forensic tool for estimating time since dea...

The aerobic intestinal microflora of 2-week-old herring (Clupea harengus) larvae was characterized by using conventional microbiological methods and electron microscopy. Larvae were hatched and kept in filtered seawater or in seawater with penicillin and streptomycin. The gastrointestinal tract of herring larvae is essentially a straight tube divided into two compartments. Light microscopy reve...

Inflammation and metabolic abnormalities are linked to each other. At present, pathogenic inflammatory response was recognized as a major player in metabolic diseases. In humans, intestinal microflora could significantly influence the development of metabolic diseases including atherosclerosis. Commensal bacteria were shown to activate inflammatory pathways through altering lipid metabolism in ...

Quercetin has a wide range of biological properties. The gut microflora can often modulate its biological activity and their potential health effects. There still is a lack of information about gut bacteria involving in this process. The strains of gut microbes from human feces that can transform quercetin were isolated and identified by in vitro fermentation. The results showed that Escherichi...

Systems biology is the latest fashion in biology, driven by advances in technology that have provided us with a suite of ‘omics’ techniques providing information or at least data, which is not quite the same thing, but can easily be confused with it at a whole range of levels of biomolecular organisation from genes through proteins to metabolites. The hope is that all of these, when combined in...

BACKGROUND The human gut is the habitat for diverse and dynamic microbial ecosystem. The human microbiota plays a critical role in functions that sustain health and is a positive asset in host defenses. Establishment of the human intestinal microbiota during infancy may be influenced by multiple factors including delivery mode. Present review compiles existing evidences on the effect of deliver...