Gut Microbiome Assembly Begins at Birth and Needs to Be Nurtured

Humans maintain symbiotic relationships with complex microbial communities in their intestinal tracts that are paramount to their host’s health and development. Given their importance, it is essential for the host to reliably acquire key members of the gut microbiota and assemble communities that provide benefits during important windows of host development. Epidemiological studies over the last 2 decades have convincingly shown that clinical and nutritional factors that disrupt early-life microbiome assembly predispose humans to infections and chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs). These connections emphasize the importance of understanding host-microbiome symbiosis on a mechanistic level and the clinical and lifestyle factors that shape and disrupt interactions during time-windows that are most important for host-microbe crosstalk.