Researchers report evidence that certain gut bacterial populations can spread quickly from person to person and across continents. The findings, described in ScienceDaily, suggest the human gut microbiome is more transmissible than earlier work assumed.
The study also identified previously hidden bacterial groups linked to aging. These groups were not well characterized before, and their connection to age raises new questions about how microbial communities change over a lifetime.
The implications are still being worked out, but the work points to a more dynamic view of the microbiome, where bacteria move through populations in ways that may influence health and disease.