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Every Man Is an Island (of Bacteria)
Shipud writes "There are ten times more bacterial cells in our body than our own cells. Most of them are located in our guts, and they affect our well-being in many ways. A group at Washington University has recently reported that although our gut microbes perform similar functions, it appears that different people have completely different compositions of gut bacteria: every man is an island, a unique microbial ecosystem composed of completely different species. One conclusion is that the whole division of bacteria into species may well be over-used in biomedicine."
Each of your cells takes up 100-1000x more space than bacteria.
Well, Im a user here, but im going anony because of my topic.
Every man is an island: Bacteria.
I could tell. How? Every person has a certain scent profile about them, even if they cannot smell it most of the time. I know mine when I work outside on a hot day. Some people at work also sometimes have a pronounced smell.. Perhaps its pheromones or something, I dont know. My GF also has one (and no, I dont mean vaginal smell). Like I said, this is one of the reasons why Im being a coward.
Now, why do I know? I had a diarrhea about 2.5 months ago, from being food-poisoned at our local Subway (friend at same, same sickness, assumed food). Standard food poison is vomiting and diarrhea, neither are which are fun in the least. Along with that are heavy sweats. However, I smelled something weird: when I went to #2, I smelled an acrid smell of the faint "pheromone" I normally smell.. It was like whatever bad food I had was killing off all my good bacteria, and I was smelling it.
So yes, I can understand Island of bacteria comment. I could also see linking the specific bacteria to weight gain/loss, BO factor, and other things. It would be neat to see a culture test of healthiness based upon non-self cultures, and perhaps inoculate yourself with other bacteria to aid in true digestion.
Back in the 80's in OMNI, there was a toothpaste on the market for about 1 month before being pulled, that had a plaque bacteria that could not digest teeth (made no cavities). Of course, gross factor was high and was summarily pulled from market...Perhaps they were right, just 20 years too early.
Bacteria are a tiny fraction of the size of your cells.
http://www.cellsalive.com/howbig.htm has a nifty little flash movie demonstrating the size difference.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
No bacterium is an island, entire of itself; every bacterium is a piece of the intestine, a part of the main. If a Lactobacillus be washed away by the sea, the colon is the less, as well as if an Escherichia were, as well as if a colony of thy friend's or of thine own were: any bacterium's death diminishes me, because I am involved in the gut biota, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
I heard about it in the radio (assuming it was the same research, I heard it about 2 weeks ago), and what I found interesting was the caloric intake for different foods was dramatically different for different people (based on stomach biology).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I heard a piece about this on NPR about a month ago. What I found very interesting was that the bacteria help you to digest foods, so one person's personal bacteria may allow her to receive more energy from say a piece of pizza than another person with different bacteria. Also very interesting was that by traveling and eating food from different regions you can pick up different bacteria and possibly gain even more energy from the foods you eat.
This is my sig, there are many like it, but this one is mine...
Common knowledge you can find in most microbiology or immunology textbooks.
Quite the opposite. What you would find in most textbooks is the assumption that there is a core human gut microbiome common to whole human populations. The Nature article refutes this. There are millions of $ being put into sequencing the human core gut microbes, but apparently there are no core gut microbes, and this human microbiome sequencing strategy needs rethinking.
I would say the fact that you keep vomitting might be what's making you skinny, not the bacteria in your gut.
Um, no, it is not. One simple initial example to get the ball running: there are hybrids where the males are sterile, but the females are fecund; for example, hybrids of domestic cats with the African serval (the resulting hybrid is called a Savannah cat). Since a housecat and a serval can produce fertile offspring, your test fails to establish them as separate species. (Note that I was careful not to say that the fertile offspring proves that they are the same species, "If A then B" doesn't entail "If B, then A.")
Now, you may be thinking of ways of strengthening your definition against examples like this one, but that was only the starting point. The broader problem is that as you try to come up with more and more precise definitions of "species," all you will do is set yourself up for ever more elaborate examples of intermediate cases that either pose a problem for your definition, or just suggest that your definition makes arbitrary, unprincipled decisions about where the line should lie. (E.g., what if there are two types of organisms that produce infertile offspring 25% of the time? 12.5%? 7.25%? How low must the percentage get to prove a species barrier? Must that number be the same for every pair of organisms, or does it make sense to measure it differently for different pairs because of some fact about genetics? What about pairs of organisms that would produce fertile offspring often enough, but are reproductively isolated by geographical boundaries? Etc.)
The deeper point is that evolution doesn't care about "species"; it cares about populations whose members interbreed, and in the real world, such populations may easily have very vague boundaries, because "X can breed with Y" isn't a yes/no matter.
Are you adequate?