Journal
FRONTIERS IN CELLULAR AND INFECTION MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 4, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fcimb.2014.00147
Keywords
microbiota; sociality; neurodevelopment; gene-environment interactions; non-coding RNA; epigenetics; evo-devo; transgenerational
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Funding
- Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), through the Irish Government's National Development Plan
- Irish Research Council (IRC) through a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship
- NIH [R01 GM085163]
- NFS [DEB 1046149]
- SFI [07/CE/B1368, 12/RC/2273]
- Irish Health Research Board, Health Research Awards [HRA_POR/2011/23, HRA_POR/2012/32]
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The tight association of the human body with trillions of colonizing microbes that we observe today is the result of a long evolutionary history. Only very recently have we started to understand how this symbiosis also affects brain function and behavior. In this hypothesis and theory article, we propose how host-microbe associations potentially influenced mammalian brain evolution and development. In particular, we explore the integration of human brain development with evolution, symbiosis, and RNA biology, which together represent a social triangle that drives human social behavior and cognition. We argue that, in order to understand how inter-kingdom communication can affect brain adaptation and plasticity, it is inevitable to consider epigenetic mechanisms as important mediators of genome-microbiome interactions on an individual as well as a transgenerational time scale. Finally, we unite these interpretations with the hologenome theory of evolution. Taken together, we propose a tighter integration of neuroscience fields with host-associated microbiology by taking an evolutionary perspective.
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