Leiden, June 10th, 2016 – A new company has arrived in the Leiden BioScience Park that helps people to gain insight into their own bacterial gut content, the microbiota. The name of this new company is MyMicroZoo™ and it’s a spin-off of BaseClear B.V. The services provided by MyMicroZoo™ allow consumers to compare their gut bacteria with others and also to understand the effect changes in lifestyle, diet and sports activity have on their gut bacteria population.
Is it important to know which bacteria are living in your gut ? Recently, scientist have defined the micro-organisms living in and on our bodies, also called the microbiome or microbiota, as one of the most important organs in the body. This organ plays an important role in the digestion of our food and also in the functioning of our immune system. As a large portion of the microbiota can be found in the gut, it’s clear that a person’s diet has a large influence on the composition of these micro-organisms. For instance, it recently became clear that chocolate, wine, coffee and buttermilk can influence the variability of our microbiota. By comparing your microbiota with that of other groups such as elite sports people or vegetarians you can see how you differ with respect to bacterial type and numbers. If your microbiota is out of balance you can then choose to make changes in your lifestyle or diet such as drinking probiotics yogurts to try to bring the microbiota back into an optimal balance. By performing the analysis regularly you can see for yourself if changes in lifestyle and eating habits (eating yoghurt, super-foods or alcohol use or sport) can lead to a positive change in your microbiota.
By joining MyMicroZoo™ you will get a great insight into how your microbiota works. We will explain what the composition of your microbiota means, what the micro-organisms are doing and how you can influence them. Based on the latest knowledge regarding the Microbiota, MyMicroZoo™ will, together with experts, provide information regarding health and diet. At the beginning this information will be limited, but as a member of the MyMicroZoo™ community you will both contribute to and can use the information we will collect regarding the connection between the microbiota composition and health. With this in mind all the community members will be encouraged to contribute information about their lifestyle, diet and health, all in an anonymous manner of course. This data can then be combined with the composition of the microbiota, thus adding to the power and knowledge of the community and database. In the coming years, it’s expected that improved analysis of this data will make it possible to make predictions about your microbiota composition and health and what consumers can do to improve both their microbiota and health. Members of the community will also be continually updated regarding the latest science and research regarding the microbiota and gut health. In this way, MyMicroZoo™ will enable you, in a unique way, to evaluate and improve your health, your knowledge of your microbiome and microbiota and, if you want, to contact fellow MyMicroZoo™ members.
MyMicroZoo™ will interest people who care about their diet, want to understand their bodily functions, their gut complaints or the impact of diet on sports performances. Therefore, MyMicroZoo™ fits perfectly in the current trend whereby people want to know and understand more about how their body works, and who are for example monitoring this using wearables or telephone apps. In addition, MyMicroZoo™ is interested in collaborations with microbiota and microbiome researchers, whereby the MyMicroZoo™ community, if they are interested, can be asked to participate in the research and additionally MyMicroZoo™ can perform the sampling and analysis.
You can order a sampling kit from the MyMicroZoo™ website, this kit enables you, in a simple way, to take a small faecal sample. After the sample is sent to MyMicroZoo™, bacterial DNA is isolated from the sample using a special protocol and analysed using Next generation sequencing technology. An advanced bioinformatics analysis pipeline is then used to generate a graphic interpretation of the type and number of bacteria present in your gut. Additionally, MyMicroZoo™ will identify the most important functions of the bacteria present. These results can then be compared to those of groups such as elite sports people or vegetarians.
More information about the MyMicroZoo™ service and the sampling kit can be found on the website www.mymicrozoo.com
