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The Gut Microbiome in Health and Disease pp 67–78Cite as

Evolutionary Perspectives on the Human Gut Microbiome

Abstract

The renewed interest in human gut microbiome research spawned by modern developments in metagenomics resulted in many fascinating new results, but confusion and seeming contradictions are still common in this nascent field. As for other subdisciplines of biology, evolutionary biology serves as a unifying principle in studying host-microbe interactions. However, the range of perspectives offered by evolution is often not considered or fully appreciated in human gut microbiome research. In this chapter we provide a broad overview of evolutionary perspectives on the human gut microbiome, which range from the origin of holobionts to strain-level microbial variation within a host’s lifetime.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Section for Evolutionary Medicine, Institute for Experimental Medicine, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Shauni Doms, Britt-Marie Hermes & John F. Baines

  2. Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany

    Shauni Doms, Britt-Marie Hermes & John F. Baines

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  1. Shauni Doms
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  2. Britt-Marie Hermes
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  3. John F. Baines
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Correspondence to John F. Baines .

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  1. Chair of Nutrition and Immunology, Technical University Munich, Freising, Germany

    Prof. Dr. Dirk Haller

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Doms, S., Hermes, BM., Baines, J.F. (2018). Evolutionary Perspectives on the Human Gut Microbiome. In: Haller, D. (eds) The Gut Microbiome in Health and Disease. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90545-7_5

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