Encouraging Microbes to Work for Us

15 April 2021 (FAO)* — In 1826, the genial French gastronome Brillat-Savarin penned the phrase “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”

Gut microbes are better at digesting fibre than our own digestive systems! ©Moving Moment/shutterstock.com

“Microbiome science is redefining nutrition and shows it involves more than just the nutrient composition of food,” says Karel Callens, an FAO food security expert who set up the Organization’s informal interdisciplinary microbiome team. Some key vitamins, amino acids and even neurotransmitters are important byproducts of microbial actions in our guts, he notes.

“Our lifestyle has changed faster than ever in recent decades, and our microbiome has responded much more quickly than our genome,” adds Fontaine. “The difference in pace may have disturbed the symbiotic relationship we have with our microbiome, which exacts a toll on our health.”

As our genome co-evolved with diets over millennia, increasing the diversity of plant-based food intake may bridge the gap she says.

“Microbiomes don’t have the kind of boundaries we often imagine exist,” says Callens.

That, he suggests, is why FAO’s “agri-food system” approach is well suited to assess how microbial guilds operate and how it is affected by environmental pollution and climate change.

“This research helps us better understand what healthy means,” says Anne Bogdanski, an FAO ecologist working on Climate Change, Biodiversity and the Environment. “We too are symbionts – without these little things we wouldn’t be alive.”

The microbiome approach also contributes to the One Health approach, which recognizes the fundamental and interconnected relationships between the health of people, animals, plants and the environment, she added.

We currently know far less than one percent of the different microbial species in the world – and we know more about bacteria than other types of microorganisms. However, much remains unknown about how they perform multiple and often inter-connected ecosystem functions.

For example, scientists in North America recently discovered the source of a disease killing bald eagles. A hitherto unknown, cyanobacteria was growing on an invasive aquatic weed species. The herbicide used to combat those weeds interacted with this cyanobacteria and produced a lethal fat-soluble neurotoxin that killed the bald eagles who ate these plants.

Such combinations show the hidden-but-huge role a microbiome can play in agricultural production, forestry and fisheries. Bacteria and fungi create mutualistic and reciprocally beneficial relations enabling effective nutrient absorption and plant health. As 80 percent of soil organic matter is of microbial origin, there is high potential to identify ways to restore soil carbon and healthy ecosystems.

Beyond the green revolution

“There’s a vast field of opportunities for microbiological applications that are part of the sustainable bioeconomy,” Bogdanski adds. Understanding a microbiome can pave the way to new kinds of fertilizers, biostimulants or biopesticides to protect against certain pests. “That’s actually more of a nature-based solution than a technological one,” she says.

The microbiome isn’t a mixing bowl where you add ingredients, but a sort of “rain forest” or interactive environment of its own.

FAO has an important role in bringing microbiome science into policy debates and making sure developing countries are not left behind, Callens emphasizes. “This is about going beyond the green revolution.”

*SOURCE: FAO. Go to ORIGINAL.
2021 Human Wrongs Watch