Microorganisms and the Microbiome -- The Gut Microbiome: Essential Symbionts or Unwelcome Guests? -- How to Analyse Microbial Communities? -- How Microbes Gain Energy with and Without Oxygen -- Who Inhabits Our Gut? Introducing the Human Gut Microbiota -- Variability and Stability of the Human Gut Microbiome -- How Gut Microorganisms Make Use of Available Carbohydrates -- Do My Microbes Make Me Fat? Potential for the Gut Microbiota to Influence Energy Balance, Obesity and Metabolic Health in Humans -- Gut Microbiota and Metabolites -- Host Responses to Gut Microbes -- Treating the Gut Microbiome as a System -- Perspectives and Prospects.

Given the at times confusing new information concerning the human microbiome released over the last few years, this book seeks to put the research field into perspective for non-specialists. Addressing a timely topic, it breaks down recent research developments in a way that everyone with a scientific background can understand. The book discusses why microorganisms are vital to our lives and how our nutrition influences the interaction with our own gut bacteria. In turn, it goes into more detail on how microbial communities are organised and why they are able to survive in the unique environment of our intestines. Readers will also learn about how their personal microbial profile is as unique as their fingerprint, and how it can be affected by a healthy or unhealthy lifestyle. Thanks to the open and easy-to-follow language used, the book offers an overview for all readers with a basic understanding of biology, and sheds new light on this fascinating and important part of our bodies.