I have just posted this on autism-genome thread, but thought it deserved a thread of its own... What is most delightful here imo is that this came out in a mainstream mag
http://www.economist.com/node/21560559
Microbes maketh man
People are not just people. They are an awful lot of microbes, too
)
http://www.economist.com/node/21560559
Microbes maketh man
People are not just people. They are an awful lot of microbes, too
“…The other field that may be changed is genetics. Many of the diseases in which the microbiome is implicated seem to run in families. In some, such as heart disease, that is partly explained by known human genes. In a lot, though, most notably autism, the genetic link is obscure. This may be because geneticists have been looking at the wrong set of genes—the 23,000 rather than the 3m. For those 3m are still inherited. They are largely picked up from your mother during the messy process of birth. Though no clear example is yet known, it is possible that particular disease-inducing strains are being passed down the generations in this way…
… Though less reliably so than the genes in egg and sperm, microbiomes,
too, can be inherited. Many bugs are picked up directly from the mother
at birth. Others arrive shortly afterwards from the immediate
environment. It is possible, therefore, that apparently genetic diseases
whose causative genes cannot be located really are heritable, but that
the genes which cause them are bacterial.”
“
(but they are forgetting to add ‘or viral’ at the end )