New and exciting research has linked the microbial population of the gastro-intestinal tract (GIT) to juvenile growth and development in vertebrates such as mice, with direct translatability to humans. In their recent review Schwarzer et al. (2018) made the case for an important link between the quality of gut microbiota and the ability of animals to thrive. It is not merely the absence of pathogenic microbiota in the gut that is important, BUT also the presence of microorganisms in the GIT that produce molecules that result in beneficial effects on nutrient absorption, immune response and cell signaling.
Researchers have shown that supplementing the diet with a ‘growth promoting’ GIT bacterial species promoted the growth of mice fed a nutritionally deficient diet. Others have shown that providing prebiotics derived from milk resulted in a similar effect, indicating that these prebiotics specifically allowed the proliferation of beneficial (commensal) microbes.