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Just published: Team uses mNGS + culture-based techniques + negative controls 👉 Identify fungi + bacteria in complex communities in the first pass meconium (stool) of infants☝️Indicates that the neonatal gut microbiome starts to form in the womb: biorxiv.org/content/10.110… 
2/2 The organisms they identified colonizing the fetal #intestine prior to birth 👉 were identified in the meconium of both term-born and #preterm newborns☝️And machine learning suggested that #fungal gut communities develop in complexity w/ advancing gestational age at birth.
3/3 Quote from paper 👉 “The demonstration of live #microorganisms in the #newborn gut represents a monumental shift from the sterile #womb hypothesis that dominated perinatal biology for the last century...”
4/4 “...The increasing prevalence and the development of #bacterial ecology with increasing gestational age suggests that this is a natural, non-pathogenic phenomenon”
6/6 “...Based on these findings, we postulate that low abundant #amniotic fluid bacterial and fungal biomass is continuously collected during #gestation and accumulates in the intestine.”
7/7 In summary 👉 “Low abundance colonization of the primordial #gut with interkingdom ecologies appears to be a normal part of healthy #pregnancy that might represent a priming of the intestine for the exponential expansion of the #microbiome after birth.”
