Commensal bacteria were critical shapers of early human populations
Tuesday, December 16, 2014 - 10:30
in Biology & Nature
Using mathematical modeling, researchers at New York and Vanderbilt universities have shown that commensal bacteria that cause problems later in life most likely played a key role in stabilizing early human populations. The finding, published in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, offers an explanation as to why humans co-evolved with microbes that can cause or contribute to cancer, inflammation, and degenerative diseases of aging.