Breast milk isn't sterile, but contains as many as 600 different species of various bacteria, including beneficial Bifidobacterium breve, B. adolescentis, B. longum, B. bifidum, and B. dentium, which contribute to colonization of the infant gut.[1] As a result, it can be defined as a probiotic food, depending on how one defines “probiotic”.[2] Breast milk also contains a variety of somatic cells and stem cells and the proportion of each cell type differs from individual to individual.[3][4] The somatic cells are mainly lactocytes and myoepithelial cells derived from the mother's mammary glands. The stem cells found in human breast milk have been shown to be able to differentiate into a variety of other cells involved in the production of bodily tissues and a small proportion of these cross over the nursing infant's intestinal tract into the bloodstream to reach certain organs and transform into fully functional cells.[5] Because of its diverse population of cells and multifarious functions, researchers have argued that breast milk should be considered a living tissue.[3]
- ^ Martín R, Jiménez E, Heilig H, Fernández L, Marín ML, Zoetendal EG, Rodríguez JM (February 2009). "Isolation of bifidobacteria from breast milk and assessment of the bifidobacterial population by PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and quantitative real-time PCR". Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 75 (4): 965–9. doi:10.1128/AEM.02063-08. PMC 2643565. PMID 19088308.
- ^ McGuire, Michelle K; McGuire, Mark A (2015-01-07). "Human Milk: Mother Nature's Prototypical Probiotic Food?1234". Advances in Nutrition. 6 (1): 112–123. doi:10.3945/an.114.007435. ISSN 2161-8313. PMC 4288270. PMID 25593150.
- ^ a b Witkowska-Zimny, Malgorzata; Kaminska-El-Hassan, Ewa (2017-07-13). "Cells of human breast milk". Cellular & Molecular Biology Letters. 22 (1): 11. doi:10.1186/s11658-017-0042-4. ISSN 1425-8153. PMC 5508878. PMID 28717367.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: PMC format (link) CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) - ^ Indumathi, S.; Dhanasekaran, M.; Rajkumar, J. S.; Sudarsanam, D. (2013-05-01). "Exploring the stem cell and non-stem cell constituents of human breast milk". Cytotechnology. 65 (3): 385–393. doi:10.1007/s10616-012-9492-8. ISSN 1573-0778. PMC 3597173. PMID 22940915.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: PMC format (link) - ^ Ninkina, Natalia; Kukharsky, Michail S.; Hewitt, Maria V.; Lysikova, Ekaterina A.; Skuratovska, Larissa N.; Deykin, Alexey V.; Buchman, Vladimir L. (2019-07-01). "Stem cells in human breast milk". Human Cell. 32 (3): 223–230. doi:10.1007/s13577-019-00251-7. ISSN 1749-0774. PMC 6570695. PMID 30972555.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: PMC format (link)
Peer Review:
Great job so far! I like that you talk about somatic and stem cells and the fact that there is a variety, but maybe you can discuss further what variety of these cells exits, or if you think that is too much detail for wikipedia, then maybe just state that a list of these cell varieties can be found in this source in X place.