The gastrointestinal lumen is home to over 400 species of microorganisms. The composition of this microbial community varies along the length of the gastrointestinal tract as a function of regional epithelial secretory activity as well as diet and other defined and undefined determinants. Improved understanding of the factors that impact luminal microbial populations and development of means to modulate gut microbes for therapeutic benefit hold great promise. The gastrointestinal epithelium, which regulates interactions between microbes and the mammalian host, is the topic of this review.
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Turner et al. (2010) studied this question.
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