sarah darwins
Senior Member
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Interesting Guardian article (picked up from a paper in Science, to which I don't have access).
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Guardian link: https://www.theguardian.com/science...ates-appearance-of-humans-genetic-study-finds
Science link: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6297/380
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The perspective is evolutionary but there are obvious implications for health.
Whenever I read this kind of thing, I wonder why we aren't routinely doing metagenomic gut profiles on neonates. The current testing might be imperfect, and the future uses uncertain, but there seems little doubt that precise manipulation of the microbiome will be a big part of future medicine. Wouldn't it be sensible to start getting baseline profiles for newborns right now? Is anyone already doing this?
*****
Guardian link: https://www.theguardian.com/science...ates-appearance-of-humans-genetic-study-finds
Science link: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6297/380
*****
The perspective is evolutionary but there are obvious implications for health.
The research suggests that microbes in our ancestors’ intestines split into new evolutionary lineages in parallel with splits in the ape family tree.
This came as a surprise to scientists, who had thought that most of our gut bacteria came from our surroundings - what we eat, where we live, even what kind of medicine we take. The new research suggests that evolutionary history is much more important than previously thought.
“If our gut bacteria have been tracing our human lineage for millions of years, it could be used to reconstruct the path of human migration. Different populations likely have different strains of the gut bacteria,” he [Prof Andrew Moeller of the University of California, Berkeley who led the study] said, noting that a comparative sample of human gut bacteria in Malawi showed slightly different microbiomes than the Americans.
That, he adds, could have implications for the burgeoning use of faecal transplants - often used in patients whose own gut bacteria have been suppressed with antibiotics. “It’s a very positive enterprise, but our results suggest those efforts need to consider that our bacteria are tracking our lineage.”
Whenever I read this kind of thing, I wonder why we aren't routinely doing metagenomic gut profiles on neonates. The current testing might be imperfect, and the future uses uncertain, but there seems little doubt that precise manipulation of the microbiome will be a big part of future medicine. Wouldn't it be sensible to start getting baseline profiles for newborns right now? Is anyone already doing this?