From the article:
“The gut microbiota is the collection of trillions of symbiont micro-organisms that populate our gastrointestinal tract. It represents an essential component of our biology and carries out important functions in our bodies, such as regulating our metabolism and immune system and protecting us from pathogenic micro-organisms.
“Recent studies have shown how some features of modernity - such as the consumption of processed food, drug use, life in hyper-sanitized environments - lead to a critical reduction of biodiversity in the gut microbiota. This depletion is mainly due to the loss of a set of microorganisms referred to as “old friends.”
“The process of depletion of the gut microbiota in modern western urban populations could represent a significant wake-up call,” says Simone Rampelli, who is a researcher at the University of Bologna and first author of the study. “This depletion process would become particularly alarming if it involved the loss of those microbiota components that are crucial to our physiology.”
“Indeed, there are some alarming signs. For example, in the West, we are witnessing a dramatic increase in cases of chronic inflammatory diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and colorectal cancer.
“The research group analyzed ancient DNA samples collected in El Salt (Spain), a site where many Neanderthals lived. To be more precise, they analyzed the ancient DNA extracted from 50,000 years old sedimentary feces (the oldest sample of fecal material available to date). In this way, they managed to piece together the composition of the micro-organisms populating the intestine of Neanderthals. By comparing the composition of the Neanderthals’ microbiota to ours, many similarities aroused.
“Through the analysis of ancient DNA, we were able to isolate a core of microorganisms shared with modern Homo sapiens,” explains Silvia Turroni, researcher at the University of Bologna and first author of the study. “This finding allows us to state that these ancient micro-organisms populated the intestine of our species before the separation between Sapiens and Neanderthals, which occurred about 700,000 years ago.”
"The assortments of bacteria that live within the intestines of isolated tribes are far more diverse than the microbes found in the guts of Americans."
A program and a place to store/warehouse the diversity of gut bacteria in the world has been started.
Sorta like this thing:
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Well....here it is, I found it:
The Microbiota Vault
A global non-profit initiative to conserve long-term health for humanity
People in 1900 had more biodiversity in their guts than people in the USA do now, but the life expectancy at birth in the US in 1900 was about 47 years (vs. close to 80 nowadays). People may be dying in greater numbers from some ailments than in the past, but they are dying in their 60s or 70s when in the old days they probably would have died long before reaching 60.