Gut Microbiota Essay

Throughout the world, childhood obesity is increasing. Childhood obesity is an important health concern because of the health risks linked to obesity and because children who are obese as a child are more likely to be obese when they are adults. When a child is born, the gut microbiota is usually sterile but over a period of time, it becomes unsterile. How the baby was delivered and how the baby is feed can have an effect on the gut microbiota. More and more children are becoming obese and are suffering from medical problems such as diabetes, liver disease and metabolic syndromes.
Even though lifestyle and changes in diet can prevent obesity, recently the microbiota in the gut has been linked to potentially affect obesity. In order to understand more about this, the gut microbiota of obese children and non-obese children was examined. The types of microbiota are different between people who are obese and for those who are not. For example, a study in Spain done on obese children showed that there was a large amount of Firmicutes …show more content…
The fecal sample was collected and stored immediately. The samples were diluted, plated and then were gram stained. In each sample, some of the colonies underwent Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ ionization mass spectrometry. For the DNA extraction, small amount of the fecal sample was placed in a solvent that also contained glass beads. The mixture was vortexed for a few seconds and then centrifuged. The supernatant was collected and phenol, chloroform and isoamylalcohol was added. Then quantitave PCR assay was performed. A dietary assessment was done on the children followed by biochemical analyses and statistical