The gut immune system and gut microbes engage in a continuous conversation that influences the body's immune system.

“What we realized is that there's this incredible conversation that's continually ongoing in our gut between our immune system and the gut microbes to maintain harmony in most cases although this can go awry, but there's a delicate balance in the gut, but also the immune system can leave the gut, those signals can leave the gut, and influence our immune system throughout our body. So really these microbes in our gut are dictating the set point of our immune system throughout our body. They can impact things like respiratory infections, how well we respond to a vaccine, how rapidly autoimmune disease can progress.”