Understanding the Bacterial Approach to Living in Community

Let us first examine the first question. How do microbes make the choice to thrive, survive, or die? The microbiome or community of microbes, in our bowel outnumbers the cells of our body. This body of microbes is acquired shortly after birth and reflects what is present in our intake of nutriment that in turn is reflective of our environment to some degree. Since it has been shown in mice that bowel flora, individual strains of bacteria, and/ or ratios of bacterial species can actually affect our mood, could our basic bowel flora actually help mold personality from birth? More importantly, should this even be studied? A salientfeature of bowel flora research is its suggested connection to autism, which would itself be a reason to study the development and composition of bowel flora in the animal model from birth.