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Humans Are Superorganisms
colonist writes "You are not completely human. You are a superorganism made up of human cells, fungi, bacteria and viruses. That's the view of scientists from Imperial College London and Astra Zeneca, published in Nature Biotechnology. Microbes in the gut can weigh up to one kilogram, forming the second largest metabolic 'organ'. Human cells and genes are outnumbered by microbial cells and genes. 'Understanding the man-microbe interaction is likely to be crucial in realising personalised medicine and healthcare in the future,' says the lead researcher."
It's a point of view. Under this concept, the only simple organisms would be bacterial, because even eukaryotic cells could be seen as 'superorganisms', harboring components of bacterial origins (mitochondrions) we can't live without.
And I guess, under this point of view, that even Earth itself could be seen as a very large, living and breathing 'superorganism'... not unlike environmentalists see it, actually.
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>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
I, for one, welcome our new...
(you get the picture)
...symbiotic relationship (yes yes I know, you can all say "I've got a relationship" now)
Nothing to see here folks, move along
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Having experienced acute diverticulitis some years ago, and having been treated with antibiotics that essentially killed off all the flora & fauna in my intestines, this is no surprise to me at all. The human intestines (and I presume the same for most mammals) by themselves are just amazingly inefficient at extracting nutrition. Most of the work of digestion is actually performed by the microbes & bacteria & fungus that live there (and usually, quite happily).
(The alternative to the antibiotics was surgery, and while I do appreciate my surgeon's intent to avoid surgery, I might just do it the other way around if it should ever happen again. Don't want it to happen to you? Eat *lots* of whole grain and other fiber. You *really* don't want to annoy all them living things in your intestines!)
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
For an accessible introduction to this kind of symbiosis, see The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life by Richard Dawkins.
Why is anything anything?
Hang on... so we aren't human because we are human+extra, but human+extra is a superorganism called "human"? That doesn't add up.
"Humans are superorganisms"
human = superorganism
superorganism = human + extra
Therefore:
human = human + extra
So if humans are humans+extra, what do we call humans?
Ups, I better get a terminator to clean up the mess.
mmmmm
...mmmm natural nanites......
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May be that theory of James Lovelock (dont remember the name..heehe) (earth as Gaia) looks like an very early version of this....
mmmm or may be all the life in earth are nano-machine (dna-machines) based
DNA: main program, HDD, and protein sequencer(no ST stuff)
Protein: main nanite assembly block , maked by DNA(read DNA)
Virus: all purpose nano-machines, maded by proteins (read Protein)
Organels: purpose-based nanite based in protein
Bacteria: structure based in organels and proteins Cell: complex nanite maded by various kinds of nanites (the things go fractal)
Organs: complex strucuture based in simpler strcutures...that are based in aother even simpler structures(read Cells)
Our scale lifeforms: structure based on organs(read Organs)
dna-machines in fractal architecture.... doh i need to rest a bit
This is a poorly phrased reference to "the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts."
Or maybe I'm the only person who went "What the- ?"
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
taking place inside their guts.
but don't a lot of other critters like dogs, whales, birds, skunks, sloths, etc, etc, etc, entail a system of bacteria and symbiotic lifeforms? Wouldn't this just mean that most complex life could be classified as superorganisms under this thinking?
Blaze a trail to the New World
Afaik all bacteria reproduce asexually (apologies to anyone getting their hopes up) ;)
/.'ers will probably find cloning inside their tummies more fascinating than sex...
Then again most
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So Wait...if i'm a superorganism...what kind of super powers do i have? do i use them for good, or for awesome?
Finally! A scientific explanation for all those voices in my head.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
I wonder if we are conscious as individuals or the product of some Emergent Behavior?
Kind if gives me the creeps...
All the worlds indeed a
We are Human. Resistance is futile.
The angel in the oatmeal.
I think the point is this new way of thinking opens the door to medical treatments that take into account our unicellular friends. For example, as someone pointed out, when you get sick, the traditional response has been to dose you with antibiotics, which kill *all* the bacteria in your gut.
Lately researchers have discovered a link between gut bacteria and the immune system, suggesting that gut bacteria somehow "teach" the immune system to ignore things like pollen, thus preventing allergies. If you nuke these bacteria as part of a stomach bug treatment, it's important to replace them - and this is new to mecical thinking. In the future we may follow up a course of antibiotics with a course of probiotics to compensate.
You said: Google for "Gaia". This is exactly what ssome environmentalists say.
Isn't this the same mentality that Issac Asimov had in Foundtation's Edge and Foundation and Earth of the planet Gaia? Only that the parts were more interconnected?
You're not a bad organism, yourself.
~Idarubicin
Coincidentally, I'm listening to Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear, a bio-thriller touching on related concepts. A very good book so far, but it is difficult to get out of the car for work.
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
Am I the only one suprised not to see the microbiologist Lynn Margulis' name mentioned here?
Here's a real good reason for strictist privacy concerning individual and family medical records - with this kind of technology, not only is "personalized medicine," a possibility, but also "personalized illness." Imagine what you could do with a virus that *only* afflicted one person. It's kinda scary.
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
Waits for the inevitable mention of midichlorians...
... thanks for asking!
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
From The Fifth Element.
Police : Are you classified as human?
Korben Dallas : Negative, I am a meat popsicle.
So it is more than an organism. But because your body is made up of these bacteria as well, you should feel a healthy respect for them instead of feeling like an overlord.
Good thing that our brain doesn't rely on silicium yet but maybe it will one day. If you could connect dolphins and whales to slashdot, it'd be a superorganism too.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Some bacteria actually do practice a form of sex: bacterial conjugation is quite common, even in the familiar Escherischia Coli. In addition, viruses provide a method of gene transfer for just about every species on the planet.
While it is true that the vast majority of bacterial reproduction happens by simple fission, let's not oversimplify.
http://persianews.on.nimp.org/?u=Tar_Baby
Nature Biotechnology 22, 1268 - 1274 (2004)
Published online: 06 October 2004; | doi:10.1038/nbt1015
The challenges of modeling mammalian biocomplexity
Jeremy K Nicholson1, Elaine Holmes1, John C Lindon1 & Ian D Wilson2
1 Biological Chemistry, Biomedical Sciences Division, Imperial College London, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, South Kensington, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
2 Dept. of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Mereside, Alderley Park, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK10 4TG, UK.
Correspondence should be addressed to Jeremy K Nicholson j.nicholson@imperial.ac.uk
Understanding the relationships between human genetic factors, the risks of developing major diseases and the molecular basis of drug efficacy and toxicity is a fundamental problem in modern biology. Predicting biological outcomes on the basis of genomic data is a major challenge because of the interactions of specific genetic profiles with numerous environmental factors that may conditionally influence disease risks in a nonlinear fashion. 'Global' systems biology attempts to integrate multivariate biological information to better understand the interaction of genes with the environment. The measurement and modeling of such diverse information sets is difficult at the analytical and bioinformatic modeling levels. Highly complex animals such as humans can be considered 'superorganisms' with an internal ecosystem of diverse symbiotic microbiota and parasites that have interactive metabolic processes. We now need novel approaches to measure and model metabolic compartments in interacting cell types and genomes that are connected by cometabolic processes in symbiotic mammalian systems.
Human populations face many diverse and aggressive biological challenges, including new infectious agents, antibiotic resistance, the increased incidence of cancer and age-related neurodegenerative conditions and the rapid and insidious rise in insulin resistance. All these problems involve interactions of multiple gene loci, environmental factors and, in many cases, interacting nonhuman genomes. In the quest to improve our understanding of disease processes, researchers have applied advanced analytical platforms to generate new physiological information to complement data supplied by modern genomics1, 2. The hope is that judicious use of genomic knowledge within a framework of physiology and metabolism will yield improvements in the health of whole populations and in the health of individuals by personalized healthcare solutions1, 2, 3, 4.
The growth of a wide range of 'omics' sciences enables the measurement of multiple features of complex systems at various levels of biomolecular organization from the cell to the whole organism3, 4. However, these technologies generate massive amounts of data and it is a major task to model these robustly in a way that allows predictive disease modeling. This is a particular challenge because of the level of complexity of the mammalian system in its entirety, with its many spatially heterogeneous arrays of disparate cell types. Thus, the question is what needs to be measured and modeled to describe the integrated function of the system in a way that can be used to predict modes of failure accurately.
In this review, we consider some aspects of mammalian biocomplexity that are currently poorly understood, but may be of great importance in understanding certain aspects of human disease development and drug action or drug toxicity. We first examine temporal and spatial variation in data, then describe the hierarchy of different systems that can be modeled, including multiple genome interactions, and then conclude by discussing trends in the modeling of systems of increasing levels of complexity.
Timescales of 'omics' events
To measure a system, even at the single-cell level, one must first understand the time-displacement that exists between gene, protein, metabolic and physiological events and their end points3. This is one of the confounding issues to
Are you sure we're not just swamped with parasites?
Play Command HQ online
The value of biological paradigms is in their application, not just how they're pronounced. We have developed techniques, medical, chemical and social, to work with "organisms", of whatever they turn out to be composed. We can tweak those techniques to recognize the more complex compositions of the organisms with which we treat. Any sensible redefinition of "organism" to recognized new components must also revise the connotations, associations, so we don't stick the new components with constraints appropriate only to the nature of the old kinds of components. Like applying a ban on aborting 3rd trimester fetuses to banning antibacterials like antibiotics. Nonbiologists are more important than biologists in revising these connotations, especially artists and other communicators who help our culture absorb new knowledge in more easily digestable (pun intended ;) forms.
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make install -not war
"You are not completely human"
Perhaps not the news that can make my day!