Integrating Microbiome Network: Establishing Linkages Between Plants, Microbes and Human Health

Abstract

The trillions of microbes that colonize and live around us govern the health of both plants and animals through a cascade of direct and indirect mechanisms. Understanding of this enormous and largely untapped microbial diversity has been the focus of microbial research from the past few decades or so. Amidst the advancements in sequencing technologies, significant progress has been made to taxonomically and functionally catalogue these microbes and also to establish their exact role in the health and disease state. In comparison to the human microbiome, plants are also surrounded by a vast diversity of microbes that form complex ecological communities that affect plant growth and health through collective metabolic activities and interactions. This plant microbiome has a substantial influence on human health and environment via its passage through the nasal route and digestive tract and is responsible for changing our gut microbiome. This review primarily focused on the advances and challenges in microbiome research at the interface of plant and human, and role of microbiome at different compartments of the body’s ecosystems along with their correlation to health and diseases. This review also highlighted the potential therapies in modulating the gut microbiota and technologies for studying the microbiome.