Anthropology of Microbes: A Study on Kitchen Micro Flora from West Bengal, India
[1]
Saheli Dey, Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.
[2]
Pranabesh Sarkar, Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.
[3]
Diptendu Chatterjee, Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.
[4]
Arup Ratan Bandyopadhyay, Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.
Global health aspects and the dynamics of human relationships attached with the concerns of biological and social scientists. Anthropology attempts to make up a holistic science of humanity by studying the material history of humans and biological diversity, combined with analyses of the variability of cultures and cultural practices. The contemporary anthropological study of food may now serve as a vehicle for examining large and varied problems of theory and research methods and therefore, the development of understanding the microbial world to reevaluate the way to view human biological and cultural diversity. In India the scenario of diverse population as a complement to cultural, political, and ethnic heritages mingled with lifestyles such as modernization, globalization, food distribution, and migration from rural to urban areas are impacting health and the human microbiome and might offer new horizon by bringing anthropology and human microbial ecology into a meaningful prospective research. In this background to best our knowledge the present study being the first attempt from Indian context to unravel the diversity of Kitchen bacteria among the two distinct (Vegetarian and Non-Vegetarian) dietary habits from the Kolkata, West Bengal, India. To achieve the purpose Samples were collected from the domestic kitchens from the two distinct dietary habits families in autoclaved sterilized cotton patch by rubbing from the specific place where foods were chopped / and or processed. The LB medium cultured samples were amplified for 16SrRNA by gene specific primer. 27F and 1492R, forward and reverse primers were used since they are universal bacterial 16SrRNA primer. Sequence for 27F primer was 5’ TACGGYTACCTTGTTACGACTT 3’ and sequence for 1492R primer was 5’ AGAGTTTGATCMTGGCTCAG 3’. PCR amplified product of 16 S rRNAgenes without restricted enzymes revealed in 1500BP, which indicated both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food digestive bacteria microbiummight be from the same generic group. Restricted Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLPs) pattern of 16S rRNA genes with two tetra cutter universal restricted enzymes, Sau 3A I and Hpa II revealed marked species diversity among the vegetarian and non-vegetarian food digestive bacteria microbium. The present study being a preliminary approach for understanding the anthropology of microbes on the basis of dietary habit / practice envisaged paramount importance of pharmacodynamics (differences which is influenced by ethnic factors) and Pharmacogenomics (the study of the role of the genome in drug response) that could be one of the immerging and urgent research areas in Anthropology.
Anthropology, Microbium, Dietary Habits, West Bengal, India, RFLPs
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