human gut metagenome Metagenome

Childhood is a formative period of behavioral and biological development, which can be modified for better or for worse, by the psychosocial environment. Not only do our own genes and the external environment influence such developmental trajectories, but the community of microbes living in, on, and around our bodies–the microbiome–plays an important role as well. By surveying the gut microbiomes of a cohort of early school-aged children with a range of psychosocial environments and subclinical mental health symptoms, we demonstrated that caregiving behaviors modified the child gut microbiome's relationship to socioeconomic risk and child behavioral dysregulation symptoms.