Biodiversity - The more the merrier!

May 22^nd is the International Day for Biological Diversity 2008. This year's theme is 'Biodiversity in Agriculture'. According to the Convention on Biodiversity who are co-promoting the day's festivities along with such luminaries of food and nutrition as the FAO, modern food production is responsible for both increasing and decreasing biodiversity. One of the things the CBD is interested in is stabilising the balance, so we can benefit from improved food (and fuel) production, whilst preserving species (the 'genetic treasures') that could become the food ingredients and medicines of the future.

Agriculture is mostly concerned with efficient production of nutritious, safe foodstuffs. To do this involves the promotion and prevention of growth of an enormous number of different species, soil, plant and animal-based organisms of various shapes and sizes - minimising the pests and pathogens while promoting the useful and edible ones.

Biological diversity in food is a very diverse subject area indeed.

CAB Abstracts, having its roots in agriculture, is a huge resource for information on all these food production relationships; it is also a fantastic place to take an investigation into biological diversity a step further. Food production, after all, doesn't stop at the farm gate for most of us.

A few months ago, a couple of fellow Handpicked...bloggers and I attended a lecture on nutrigenomics. The essence of Anne-Marie Minihane's discussion was how to make best use of differences in our genetic make-up to best predict what sort of diets we should be eating. So even eating the food that has been produced isn't the end of the biodiversity story.

The food-genome interaction doesn't even stop at nutrigenomics. It is further complicated by our own internal ecosystems, the intestinal microflora, as highlighted earlier in the year at the Nutrigenomics 2008 meeting in Paris. Every single one of us is home to more bacterial cells than we have human cells in our body - and many of these get to the food we eat before our own bodies' digestive processes do. Some of them are even responsible for producing essential nutrients¹. Others help protect us from disease. This symbiotic relationship in neither uniform nor static. The intestinal microflora is a delicately balanced yet dynamic ecosystem². It is affected by the food we eat, what medicines we take, our state of health and quite possibly many other factors we just don't know of yet.

Inoculated very early in life by our first contact with the outside world^3,4, notably the skin on our mother's breast; and modulated by the complex cocktail of nutrients and bioactive substances present in her milk⁵, followed by the microorganisms ingested along with solid food⁶, the human intestinal microflora can influence the state of our health from birth to death^7-13. It seems that the more we learn about our internal ecosystem, the more we realise we just don't know¹⁴. Recent evidence suggests that the more diverse and less purified our diet is, the wider the diversity of the intestinal microflora.

It is surely well worth preserving our own intestinal biodiversity for future generations too.

References and further reading
¹Cooke, G. et al. (2006). Newly identified vitamin K-producing bacteria isolated from the neonatal faecal flora. Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease Vol. 18(3/4), pp. 133-138.
²Bambou, J.C. et al. (2006). The intestinal flora: the scales without the sword. Journal de la Société de Biologie Vol. 200(2), pp. 113-120.
³Campeotto, F. et al. (2007). Establishment of the microflora in neonates. Gastoentérologie Clinique et Biologique Vol. 31(5), pp. 533-542
⁴Penders, J. et al., (2006). Factors influencing the composition of the intestinal microbiota in early infancy. Pediatrics Vol. 118(2), pp. 511-521.
⁵Softic, I and Atic, N. (2007). Breastfeeding protects against infection. Pedijatrija Danas Vol. 3(1), pp. 33-45.
⁶Magne, F. et al. (2006). A longitudinal study of infant faecal microbiota during weaning. FEMS Microbiology Ecology Vol. 58(3), pp. 563-571.
⁷Langhendeies, J.P. (2006). Early bacterial colonisation of the intestine: why it matters? Archives de Pédiatrie Vol. 13(12), pp. 1562-1534.
⁸Weng, M.Q. and Walker, W.A. (2006). Bacterial colonization, probiotics, probiotics and clinical disease. Journal of Pediatrics Vol. 149 (5, Supplement), S107-S114.
⁹Wang Mei et al., (2008). Reduced diversity in the early fecal microbiota of infants with atopic eczema. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 2008, Vol. 121, No. 1, pp. 129-134.
¹⁰Schrezenmeir, J. (2006). When intestinal barrier become floppy: influence of intestinal microflora on acute infections. Aktuelle Ernährungsmedizin Vol. 31(S2), pp. S152-S155.
¹¹Szakály, S. (2007). The intestinal flora and main reasons of its modification - benefits of probiotics in prevention and therapy. Tejgazdaság Vol. 67(2), pp. 2-6.
¹²Kalliomäki, M. et al. (2008). Early differences in fecal microbiota composition may predict overweight. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol. 87(3), 534-538.
¹³Fetissov, S.O. et al.,  (2008). Autoantibodies against appetite-regulating peptide hormones and neuropeptide: putative modulation by gut microflora. Nutrition Vol. 24(4), pp. 348-359.
¹⁴Leclerc, M. et al., (2007). Intestinal microbiota: a little known world. Cahiers de Nutrition et de Diététique Vol. 42, Special issue, pp. 2S22-2S27.