live probiotic cultures and the gastrointestinal tract: symbiotic preservation of tolerance whilst attenuating pathogenicity.

Bacteria comprise the earliest form of independent life on this planet. Bacterial development has included co–operative symbiosis with plants (e.g., Leguminosae family and nitrogen fixing bacteria in soil) and animals (e.g., the gut microbiome). A fusion event of two prokaryotes evolutionarily gave rise to the eukaryote cell in which mitochondria may be envisaged as a genetically functional mosaic, a relic from one of the prokaryote cells. The discovery of bacterial inhibitors such chloramphenicol and others has been exploited to highlight mitochondria as arising from a bacterial progenitor. As such the evolution of human life has been complexly connected to bacterial activity. This is embodied, by the appearance of mitochondria in eukaryotes (alphaproteobacteria contribution), a significant endosymbiotic evolutionary event. During the twentieth century there was an increasing dependency on anti–microbials as mainline therapy against bacterial infections. It is only comparatively recently that the essential roles played by the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) microbiome in animal health and development has been recognized as opposed to the GIT microbiome being a toxic collection of micro–organisms. It is now well documented that t