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Recent research from Gordon's lab hints at the potential public-health impact of a clearer understanding of our microbial tenants. Gordon and his colleagues have shown that obese people harbor different microbial communities than lean people. And as obese people lost weight, their microbes began to look more like their lean counterparts' microbes.
Researchers aren't yet sure what triggers the differences, but they found in a similar study in mice that the microbial populations of obese mice could more effectively release calories from food during digestion than could microbes of their lean littermates.
While exciting, Gordon's research also illustrates the challenges of cataloging microbes. To truly interpret the human microbiome, scientists will need to look at the variation in microbial communities among many people and a variety of populations. Complicating the problem is that, while an individual's human genome is static, a person's microbial composition--and thus his or her microbiome--fluctuates over time. So an accurate picture of one person's microbiome could require multiple resequencing efforts.
These types of studies could yield the biggest reward, revealing whether different organisms are correlated with different health states. Gordon and others hope that a microbial analysis will ultimately become a routine part of medical exams, perhaps used to diagnose different diseases.
Scientists are still debating whether the microbiome will become a road-map project, and if so, what the final goals of the project will be: should they focus on generating complete sequences of dominant microbes, for example, or devote equal energy to the complex task of studying microbial variation?
In the meantime, microbiologists are getting ready. Three large sequencing centers--at Baylor, the Broad Institute, and Washington University--have garnered funding to sequence the genomes of a few of the gut microorganisms that can be grown in the lab, which will be crucial in later studies. Ultimately, says Gordon, "we'll get a much more transcendent view of ourselves as a supraorganism with traits acquired from our microbial partnerships."
Researchers sequence more than 200 strains of the bug and find a catalog of ways they evade drugs and vaccines.
Variation in our microbial inhabitants could help tailor efforts to treat illness.
Salmonella bacteria grown on the space shuttle showed odd genetic activity, becoming much more virulent.
It seems inevitable to me that given that kind of cell ratio, we have long since evolved specific DNA-based interdependencies with or dependencies on these microbes. Some would be negative, like our inability to make vitamin K without certain gut bacteria. Which also makes me wonder if we couldn't introduce a new symbiosis with a vitamin C-making bug. (E.g. Maybe the whole panoply of vitamins could be eliminated from our diet with proper manipulation of gut bacterial colonies.)
Wow! Yeah!! So maybe we can reprogram them suckers so's we can eat JUST WHAT WE WANT -- like all french fries and burgers, or nuttin' but carrots, or just drink wine and eat a little fois gras. Let the bugs take care of the rest.
Or-- maybe not.....wunner what ee-voll-you-shun was doin' on this one all this time?
Ten times as many microbe cells as human? I would expect that many of the Prokaryotes will be MUCH smaller than human eukaryotes, but that isn't the case for the multi-cellular organisms that are also part of the mix. Seem's there would be a shear question of the mass/volume a 10x claim would represent.
There is already a problem that should be noted by the community with regard to cataloging all microbes. There are doctors and scientists that actually believe that there is ONE organism on earth that cannot be typed or shown in DNA PCR .That organism is Borrelia Burgdorferi. If you dare to enter this argument you will find the Infectious Disease Society of America humiliating themselves with their limiting beliefs about this particular spirochete. The sole purpose of the fight over this organism appears to be motivated by greed.
The Infectious Disease Society of America along with our CDC publicly state that Borrelia has NO AVAILABLE BLOOD DNA with an active infection. Any positive blood DNA PCR tests are not credited towards real data collection on this illness.
Borrelia is a devastating lifelong obviously incurable infection. Why else would it take an RN like myself over thirty years to find out that instead of the misdiagnosis of Lupus I have been carrying around, perhaps a spirochete workup would have been more appropriate. As a traveling nurse, I will go on record that doctors never look for this illness. So if you do not look, how often do you find?
Borrelia is more likely a silent epidemic albeit one without DNA. That kinda blows a hole in your information Miss Singer.
Guest (badger9799)
Borrelia burgdorferi is a bacterium with DNA just like any other bacterium. There are very few detectable organisms in an infected person, but PCR has been used successfully to detect the DNA of this bacterium in patients' blood and/or synovial (joint) fluid samples.
Guest (Stretch)
How long before tattooing and body piercing is supplemented with glow in the dark or luminescence?
Or electric eel like properties?
Stretch
The EU-funded project MetaHIT (Metagenomics of the Human Intestinal Tract) has an official website available at: www.metahit.eu
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zippo
24 Comments
Wow, imagine if you could re-engineer some microbes to consume and digest harmful ones, even producing useful substances for the human body? What if they could digest your "bad" cholestorol?
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ippisl
2 Comments
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there is already a company working on germs to kill the teeth damaging germs in our mouth and replace them.
if there idea would work as promised , it could mean an end to dentist treatments , daily tooth brushing , etc...
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zippo
24 Comments
Re:
Now that's what I wanna hear!
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cretin001
35 Comments
Re:
i had like 20 something cavities when i was smaller... I hope they figure it out soon caus pulling teeth out hurts
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