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Richness and ecosystem development across faecal snapshots of the gut microbiota

Nature Microbiology volume 3, pages 526–528 (2018)Cite this article

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Faecal microbiota richness is considered a hallmark of gut health and stability. However, in healthy hosts, richness would primarily reflect the stage of ecosystem development through the gut, rather than community resilience. This Comment discusses the need to rethink microbiome biomarkers in the context of gut ecology.

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Fig. 1: Faecal microbiomes as snapshots of gut ecosystem maturation in healthy individuals.

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Acknowledgements

S.V.-S. is supported by a post-doctoral fellowship from Research Foundation Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen). The Raes Lab is funded by VIB, KU Leuven, the Rega institute for Medical Research, the FWO EOS program (30770923), FP7 METACARDIS (305312), H2020 SYSCID (733100), and AD-gut (686271), and JPco-fuND aSynProtec.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Rega Institute, KU Leuven – University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Gwen Falony, Sara Vieira-Silva & Jeroen Raes

  2. VIB, Center for Microbiology, Leuven, Belgium

    Gwen Falony, Sara Vieira-Silva & Jeroen Raes

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  1. Gwen Falony
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  2. Sara Vieira-Silva
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Correspondence to Jeroen Raes.

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Falony, G., Vieira-Silva, S. & Raes, J. Richness and ecosystem development across faecal snapshots of the gut microbiota. Nat Microbiol 3, 526–528 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-018-0143-5

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