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Lessons learned from the prenatal microbiome controversy

For more than a century, the prenatal environment was considered sterile. Over the last few years, findings obtained with next-generation sequencing approaches from samples of the placenta, the amniotic fluid, meconium, and even fetal tissues have challenged the dogma of a sterile womb, and addition...

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Autores principales: Blaser, Martin J., Devkota, Suzanne, McCoy, Kathy D., Relman, David A., Yassour, Moran, Young, Vincent B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7805060/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33436098
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40168-020-00946-2
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author Blaser, Martin J.
Devkota, Suzanne
McCoy, Kathy D.
Relman, David A.
Yassour, Moran
Young, Vincent B.
author_facet Blaser, Martin J.
Devkota, Suzanne
McCoy, Kathy D.
Relman, David A.
Yassour, Moran
Young, Vincent B.
author_sort Blaser, Martin J.
collection PubMed
description For more than a century, the prenatal environment was considered sterile. Over the last few years, findings obtained with next-generation sequencing approaches from samples of the placenta, the amniotic fluid, meconium, and even fetal tissues have challenged the dogma of a sterile womb, and additional reports have emerged that used culture, microscopy, and quantitative PCR to support the presence of a low-biomass microbial community at prenatal sites. Given the substantial implications of prenatal exposure to microbes for the development and health of the host, the findings have gathered substantial interest from academics, high impact journals, the public press, and funding agencies. However, an increasing number of studies have challenged the prenatal microbiome identifying contamination as a major issue, and scientists that remained skeptical have pointed to inconsistencies with in utero colonization, the impact of c-sections on early microbiome assembly, and the ability to generate germ-free mammals. A lively academic controversy has emerged on the existence of the wider importance of prenatal microbial communities. Microbiome has asked experts to discuss these issues and provide their thoughts on the implications. To allow for a broader perspective of this discussion, we have specifically selected scientists, who have a long-standing expertise in microbiome sciences but who have not directly been involved in the debate so far.
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spelling pubmed-78050602021-01-14 Lessons learned from the prenatal microbiome controversy Blaser, Martin J. Devkota, Suzanne McCoy, Kathy D. Relman, David A. Yassour, Moran Young, Vincent B. Microbiome Commentary For more than a century, the prenatal environment was considered sterile. Over the last few years, findings obtained with next-generation sequencing approaches from samples of the placenta, the amniotic fluid, meconium, and even fetal tissues have challenged the dogma of a sterile womb, and additional reports have emerged that used culture, microscopy, and quantitative PCR to support the presence of a low-biomass microbial community at prenatal sites. Given the substantial implications of prenatal exposure to microbes for the development and health of the host, the findings have gathered substantial interest from academics, high impact journals, the public press, and funding agencies. However, an increasing number of studies have challenged the prenatal microbiome identifying contamination as a major issue, and scientists that remained skeptical have pointed to inconsistencies with in utero colonization, the impact of c-sections on early microbiome assembly, and the ability to generate germ-free mammals. A lively academic controversy has emerged on the existence of the wider importance of prenatal microbial communities. Microbiome has asked experts to discuss these issues and provide their thoughts on the implications. To allow for a broader perspective of this discussion, we have specifically selected scientists, who have a long-standing expertise in microbiome sciences but who have not directly been involved in the debate so far. BioMed Central 2021-01-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7805060/ /pubmed/33436098 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40168-020-00946-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Commentary
Blaser, Martin J.
Devkota, Suzanne
McCoy, Kathy D.
Relman, David A.
Yassour, Moran
Young, Vincent B.
Lessons learned from the prenatal microbiome controversy
title Lessons learned from the prenatal microbiome controversy
title_full Lessons learned from the prenatal microbiome controversy
title_fullStr Lessons learned from the prenatal microbiome controversy
title_full_unstemmed Lessons learned from the prenatal microbiome controversy
title_short Lessons learned from the prenatal microbiome controversy
title_sort lessons learned from the prenatal microbiome controversy
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7805060/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33436098
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40168-020-00946-2
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