Are Human Beings Organisms Or Living Ecosystems?

Hugh Pickens writes "Every human body harbors about 100 trillion bacterial cells, outnumbering human cells 10 to one. There's been a growing consensus among scientists that bacteria are not simply random squatters, but organized communities that evolve with us and are passed down from generation to generation. 'Human beings are not really individuals; they're communities of organisms,' says microbiologist Margaret McFall-Ngai. 'This could be the basis of a whole new way of looking at disease.' Recently, for example, evidence has surfaced that obesity may well include a microbial component. Jeffrey Gordon's lab at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis published findings that lean and obese twins — whether identical or fraternal — harbor strikingly different bacterial communities that are not just helping to process food directly; they actually influence whether that energy is ultimately stored as fat in the body. Last year, the National Institutes of Health launched the Human Microbiome Project to characterize the role of microbes in the human body, a formal recognition of bacteria's far-reaching influence, including their contributions to human health and certain illnesses. William Karasov, a physiologist and ecologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes that the consequences of this new approach will be profound. 'We've all been trained to think of ourselves as human,' says Karasov, adding that bacteria have usually been considered only as the source of infections, or as something benign living in the body. Now, Karasov says, it appears 'we are so interconnected with our microbes that anything studied before could have a microbial component that we hadn't thought about.'"

Comments

Obesity & Bacteria

[plague3106]

So the bacteria in the twins is different... why is it worded in such a way as to imply the different bacteria is the reason that one is obese and the other isn't, instead of the type of bacteria changed because being obese (and the eating that goes along with it) favor one type over the other.

Re:Obesity & Bacteria

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been struggling with obesity for some time now. I eat more healthy than many of my slimmer friends and I often work out more, yet I still weigh considerably more.

Does this mean that it's impossible for me to loose weight? No way, I have been exercising more and eating better and I know have been shedding more pounds. It's just frustrating to watch them eat more junk and not work out at all, and remain slim, where as I would balloon :|

Re:Obesity & Bacteria

[Stradivarius]

Newton's laws of gravity are not really right either. They didn't know about relativity back then. But Newton's laws are are good enough approximations for things ordinary people are doing in their day.

Same thing goes for how to lose weight or avoid being fat. Eating fewer calories and burning more calories by exercising isn't the complete picture. Some folks have genetic predispositions for either high or low metabolisms. Some build muscle easier than others. And now we find out that some folks have different microbial components that can influence this.

But none of that changes the basic advice you should give people, which is if you want to be fit (or at least not fat), then eat right and exercise regularly.

This isn't "hating on the fatties". If you let people incorrectly believe that "my genes made me fat", while it may make some folks feel less guilty, it also undermines their confidence in their own ability to get healthy. It's in nobody's interest to make fat people feel like being fat is just their lot in life, rather than an obstacle they could overcome with hard work and persistence.

Let me be first

[Fotograf]

as a human overlord to welcome our bacteria inhabitants

Its a stupid distinction

[DarkOx]

While the study of our relationship with the bacteria and other microbes that live inside us is interesting and valid its kinda dumb to talk about ourselves as ecosystems. We are another life form, that has a symbiotic relationship with those microbes in a larger ecosystem.

We don't need words like symbiotic if we are going to think of ourselves as an ecosystem. Also just about any animal or plant made of more than a few cells is going to be an ecosystem under this implied definition. I am not sure how exactly we want to define ecosystem but something a little more complex than "any thing which something lives inside" seems appropriate.

Re:Of course

[Sique]

As in the old jokes, where two planets meet:

- How's going?
- Bad... I got Mankind.
- Had it also. Not a big problem though, it goes away.

Viruses, too

[forrie]

A recent program on NatGeo (Explorer?) hypothesizes that viruses are also a key part of human evolution.

The "junk DNA" that we all have is likely the result of viruses.

They've also discovered that viruses in the wild actually quite easily jump from species to species, too.

In one of the experiments, they found a large amount of a certain virus in the womb of a sheep during pregnancy. When inoculated against the virus, the pregnancy would not complete.

Very interesting theory.