Chronic disease risk

The most significant differences between human and a chimp could be, size, hair and brain. But, if we take into account the microscopic world, DID YOU COUNT YOUR MICROBIOME?

It is not just the surface that we are different

What modified our gut flora so dramatically? changing diets and habitats probably both played a role.

They found that a loss of microbial diversity appears to have sped up suddenly in modern humans, “divergence of the microbiome from the microbiome of apes, and a drastic loss of diversity of the microbial community," says Thomas Bosch of the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany.

In one hand, among the bugs we have lost are a number that help digest plant matter, while in the other hand, we have gained others that help us digest meat. That makes sense in light of our diet.

"Other work has shown if you can't digest complex plant polysaccharides, they sit around in the gut where they can cause inflammation," he says. "So not having certain bacteria could make people more predisposed to chronic inflammation".

For now, all these possible links between the microbiome and our health still need to be firmed up with more studies.

"The new study demonstrates that divergence of humans from great apes was accompanied by the establishment of a completely different, human-specific microbiome," says Bosch. "Whether this change of the micobiome was one of the key drivers of human evolution and the development of human specific features remains to be shown."