Sick Individuals and Sick (Microbial) Populations: Challenges in Epidemiology and the Microbiome

Renson, Audrey; Herd, Pamela; Dowd, Jennifer Beam

doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040119-094423

Cited by 21 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 140 publications

(173 reference statements)

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“…A paradigmatic example is the expected reduction in the diversity of microbiotas in different hosts, facilitating their merging and coalescence . Microbiotas are getting sick (Renson et al, 2020). It is currently difficult to predict whether these effects will accelerate or constraint bacterial diversification and speciation, but a larger number of common or overlapping niches might result in the emergence of highly generalized/transmissible new bacterial organisms, eventually potentially high-risk pathogens for higher plants and animals, including humans.…”

Section: The Consequences Of Anthropogenic Uniformization Of Nichesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Origin of Niches and Species in the Bacterial World

et al. 2021

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Niches are spaces for the biological units of selection, from cells to complex communities. In a broad sense, “species” are biological units of individuation. Niches do not exist without individual organisms, and every organism has a niche. We use “niche” in the Hutchinsonian sense as an abstraction of a multidimensional environmental space characterized by a variety of conditions, both biotic and abiotic, whose quantitative ranges determine the positive or negative growth rates of the microbial individual, typically a species, but also parts of the communities of species contained in this space. Microbial organisms (“species”) constantly diversify, and such diversification (radiation) depends on the possibility of opening up unexploited or insufficiently exploited niches. Niche exploitation frequently implies “niche construction,” as the colonized niche evolves with time, giving rise to new potential subniches, thereby influencing the selection of a series of new variants in the progeny. The evolution of niches and organisms is the result of reciprocal interacting processes that form a single unified process. Centrifugal microbial diversification expands the limits of the species’ niches while a centripetal or cohesive process occurs simultaneously, mediated by horizontal gene transfers and recombinatorial events, condensing all of the information recovered during the diversifying specialization into “novel organisms” (possible future species), thereby creating a more complex niche, where the selfishness of the new organism(s) establishes a “homeostatic power” limiting the niche’s variation. Once the niche’s full carrying capacity has been reached, reproductive isolation occurs, as no foreign organisms can outcompete the established population/community, thereby facilitating speciation. In the case of individualization-speciation of the microbiota, its contribution to the animal’ gut structure is a type of “niche construction,” the result of crosstalk between the niche (host) and microorganism(s). Lastly, there is a parallelism between the hierarchy of niches and that of microbial individuals. The increasing anthropogenic effects on the biosphere (such as globalization) might reduce the diversity of niches and bacterial individuals, with the potential emergence of highly transmissible multispecialists (which are eventually deleterious) resulting from the homogenization of the microbiosphere, a possibility that should be explored and prevented.

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Section: The Consequences Of Anthropogenic Uniformization Of Nichesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Origin of Niches and Species in the Bacterial World

et al. 2021

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“…However, for rare outcomes such as gestational diabetes or birth defects, only casecontrol data may be available, which makes it much more challenging to resolve the temporal ordering from exposure to metabolite to outcome. One possible solution is using stored biological samples that were collected early enough in pregnancy and prior to the development of the disease in a nested case-control study design [89].…”

Section: Implications For Future Studies and Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Air Pollution and Adverse Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes: Mediation Analysis Using Metabolomic Profiles

Inoue

Yan

Arah

et al. 2020

Curr Envir Health Rpt

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Purpose of Review-Review how to use metabolomic profiling in causal mediation analysis to assess epidemiological evidence for air pollution impacts on birth outcomes.Recent Findings-Maternal exposures to air pollutants have been associated with pregnancy complications and adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes. Causal mediation analysis enables us to estimate direct and indirect effects on outcomes (i.e., effect decomposition), elucidating causal mechanisms or effect pathways. Maternal metabolites and metabolic pathways are perturbed by air pollution exposures may lead to adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes, thus they can be considered mediators in the causal pathways. Metabolomic markers have been used to explain the biological mechanisms linking air pollution and respiratory function, and of arsenic exposure and birth weight. However, mediation analysis of metabolomic markers has not been used to assess air pollution effects on adverse birth outcomes. In this article, we describe the assumptions and Beate Ritz,

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“…Taken as a whole, the emerging microbiome science allows scientists to visualize how individual and community disadvantage “gets under the skin” and into the mind–-body interface [ 112 , 113 ]. Thus, from the ARPA-H perspective, it should encourage influential program managers to examine the structural forces that drive “inequities” of the biologically relevant microbiome.…”

Section: New Perspectives On the Ecology Of Social Disadvantagementioning

confidence: 99%

Earth Dreams: Reimagining ARPA for Health of People, Places and Planet

Logan¹,

Berman

Prescott

2021

IJERPH

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Bold new approaches are urgently needed to overcome global health challenges. The proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is intended to provide rapid health breakthroughs. While new technologies for earlier disease detection and more effective treatment are critical, we urge equal attention be given to the wider (physical, emotional, social, political, and economic) environmental ecosystems driving the non-communicable disease (NCD) crisis in the first place. This requires an integrated, cross-sectoral vision that spans the interwoven connections affecting health across the scales of people, places, and planet. This wider “exposome” perspective considers biopsychosocial factors that promote resilience and reduce vulnerabilities of individuals and communities over time—the many variables driving health disparities. Since life course health is strongly determined by early life environments, early interventions should be prioritized as a matter of effectiveness and social justice. Here, we explore the origins of the Advanced Research Project Agency and point to its potential to build integrated solutions, with wisdom and ethical value systems as a compass. Since the planned ARPA-H is anticipated to spawn international collaborations, the imagined concept is of relevance to a broad audience of researchers. With appropriate input, the quest for health equity through personalized, precision medicine while deconstructing unacceptable structural inequities may be accelerated.

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Sick Individuals and Sick (Microbial) Populations: Challenges in Epidemiology and the Microbiome

Cited by 21 publications

References 140 publications

The Origin of Niches and Species in the Bacterial World

The Origin of Niches and Species in the Bacterial World

Air Pollution and Adverse Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes: Mediation Analysis Using Metabolomic Profiles

Earth Dreams: Reimagining ARPA for Health of People, Places and Planet

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