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The surprisingly resourceful ways bacteria thrive in the human gut

The gut microbiome is so useful to human digestion and health that it is often called an extra digestive organ. This vast collection of bacteria and other microorganisms in the intestine helps us break down foods and produce ...

Why some feces float and others sink

A team of researchers at the Mayo Clinic has solved the mystery of why some people find their bowel movements floating while others find theirs sinking to the bottom of the toilet bowl. In their paper published in the journal ...

Researchers construct most complex, complete synthetic microbiome

Key studies in the last decade have shown that the gut microbiome, the collection of hundreds of bacterial species that live in the human digestive system, influences neural development, response to cancer immunotherapies, ...

What guppy guts can teach us about evolution

On the list of scientific tools that help us understand health, evolution or the environment, the Trinidadian guppy doesn't often come to mind.

Bacteria with recording function capture gut health status

Researchers from ETH Zurich, University Hospital of Bern and the University of Bern have equipped gut bacteria with data logger functionality as a way of monitoring which genes are active in the bacteria. These microorganisms ...

Unparalleled inventory of the human gut ecosystem

An international team of scientists has collated all known bacterial genomes from the human gut microbiome into a single large database, allowing researchers to explore the links between bacterial genes and proteins, and ...

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Gastrointestinal tract

The digestive tract is the system of organs within multicellular animals that takes in food, digests it to extract energy and nutrients, and expels the remaining matter. The major function of the gastrointestinal tract are ingestion, digestion, absorption, and defecation. The GI tract differs substantially from animal to animal. Some animals have multi-chambered stomachs, while some animals' stomachs contain a single box. In a human adult male, the GI tract is approximately 6.5 meters (20 feet) long and consists of the upper and lower GI tracts. The tract may also be divided into foregut, midgut, and hindgut, reflecting the embryological origin of each segment of the tract.

The remainder of this article focuses on human gastrointestinal anatomy; see digestion for the process in other organisms.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA