Abstract
All eukaryotic organisms are holobionts representing complex collaborations between the entire microbiome of each eukaryote and its innate cells. These linked constituencies form complex localized and interlocking ecologies in which the specific microbial constituents and their relative abundance differ substantially according to age and environmental exposures. Rapid advances in microbiology and genetic research techniques have uncovered a significant previous underestimate of the extent of that microbial contribution and its metabolic and developmental impact on holobionts. Therefore, a re-calibration of the neonatal period is suggested as a transitional phase in development that includes the acquisition of consequential collaborative microbial life from extensive environmental influences. These co-dependent, symbiotic relationships formed in the fetal and neonatal stages extend into adulthood and even across generations.
Highlights
In only a relatively few years, two complementary lines of research have intersected to dramatically alter our perceptions of the organizational structure of eukaryotic macroorganisms
THE IMPACT OF THE MICROBIOME ON DEVELOPMENT. All of these factors permit the reappraisal of the neonatal period. It can be viewed as the reciprocating intersection of an overarching maternal influence on the dynamics of the multi-source accretion of a neonatal microbiome that is significant for its development
Chiu and Gilbert reinforce this same point [18]. They argue that the relationship between humans as holobionts and our essential microbial fraction is an instance of reciprocal scaffolding, developmental mutualism, and ecological niche construction
Summary
In only a relatively few years, two complementary lines of research have intersected to dramatically alter our perceptions of the organizational structure of eukaryotic macroorganisms. It is apparent that all macroorganisms are hologenomic entities Such organisms represent vast collaborations of mutually competitive and co-dependent cellular ecologies that entwine highly diverse microbial constituencies with innate eukaryotic cells [1,2,3]. Any traditional concept of “host” and “guest” no longer strictly applies across this seamless developmental diachronic arc [3] This contemporary conceptualization of multicellular eukaryotic organisms displaces the historical notion of innate “us” and conjoined microbial life as “other” into a modern appraisal of an organic entity that is a consensual “we.” All evolutionary development of all eukaryotic macroorganisms is derived from unicellular roots and remains perpetually anchored within cellular processes and conditions [19,20,21,22,23]. The neonatal period can be represented as one crucial stage of temporal variation of these mixed cellular ecologies that must perforce exist within immunological rules [3]
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