Microbiota research: From history to advances

Abstract

Microbiota are communities of diverse microorganisms found in multicellular creatures. The study of microbiota in human bodies initiated since the late of the 19th century, and has been flourishing with the proceeding of the Human Microbiome Project (HMP), an international project aimed to identify the types and roles of the microorganisms in human. So far, human microbiota, especially the microbiota residing in human intestines, have been shown to affect various aspects of human life, including metabolism, immunity, neural activities, aging process, and so on. Some of them are pathogenic, while some of them are beneficial, or even essential to human. In this review, we summarized the up-to-date studies characterizing the influence of different microorganism to human.