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Human microbiome churns out thousands of tiny novel proteins (Stanford research 2019)

Murph

:)
Messages
1,799
Human microbiome churns out thousands of tiny novel proteins

The bacteria in our gut make thousands of tiny, previously unidentified proteins that could shed light on human health and advance drug development, Stanford researchers have found.

...

The proteins belong to more than 4,000 new biological families predicted to be involved in, among other processes, the warfare waged among different bacterial strains as they vie for primacy in coveted biological niches, the cell-to-cell communication between microbes and their unwitting hosts, and the critical day-to-day housekeeping duties that keep the bacteria happy and healthy.


Because they are so small — fewer than 50 amino acids in length — it’s likely the proteins fold into unique shapes that represent previously unidentified biological building blocks. If the shapes and functions of these proteins can be recreated in the lab, they could help researchers advance scientific understanding of how the microbiome affects human health and pave the way for new drug discovery.


A paper describing the research findings was published Aug. 8 in Cell. Ami Bhatt, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and of genetics, is the senior author. Postdoctoral scholar Hila Sberro, PhD, is the lead author.

...

More here: http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-ne...rns-out-thousands-of-tiny-novel-proteins.html
 

Murph

:)
Messages
1,799
I get excited by moments like this where they make additional findings in basic research. The more it is clear we don't even know what's happening in the human body, the more the lack of an explanation for MECFS makes sense.
 

Jackb23

Senior Member
Messages
293
Location
Columbus, Ohio
I really hate the microbiome. It's parasitic, it's inherently complex, we don't know anything about it, and the best therapeutic option is to swallow someone else's poop.

Yes, yes it is. But if we’re being honest it is much easier to access and study than the brain. The brain is so protected by the body that is makes rather primitive styled studies extremely hard. If it were up to me, I would much rather the problem arise from the gut and not from the brain.
I also, understand that there are multitudes of other domains in which this illness may arise. We shall see. Either way, all of these things are likely very intimately interconnected.
 

S-VV

Senior Member
Messages
310
I don't hate my microbiome. After all, I'd die without it. I hate that we don't understand it well enough yet. That ignorance, fortunately, is solvable.
Germ free mice do have some developmental disorders, but they are also protected from most autoinmune diseases, and some types of cancer.

Would you really die without your microbiome? What critical compound would you be missing that can only be obtained from it?
 

S-VV

Senior Member
Messages
310
Yes, yes it is. But if we’re being honest it is much easier to access and study than the brain. The brain is so protected by the body that is makes rather primitive styled studies extremely hard. If it were up to me, I would much rather the problem arise from the gut and not from the brain.
I also, understand that there are multitudes of other domains in which this illness may arise. We shall see. Either way, all of these things are likely very intimately interconnected.
The brain is also a bad place to have a disorder, but at least there are a lot of options to treat it. We have extensive knowledge of how it works and how it can be modulated.

But yeah, it would be awesome if it turned out that this whole illness is just IgG mediated, or senithing simple like diabetic insulin resistance.
 
Messages
61
The microbiome is never the cause of a disease, but always changes only as a result of a disease. What should this research bring? Therefore, the money that I simply waste is that you could better get involved in the research of, for example, dorsal root ganglionitis.
 

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,679
Location
Alberta
Would you really die without your microbiome?

Not immediately, but in the long term, you'd be at sub-par health, which makes it more likely to die of other causes which otherwise might not be a problem. Without your microbiome and without supplements, you'd probably die of nutrient deficiency (or other issues due to that deficiency). Without our exterior mibrobiome, we'd be at risk from other microbes. Furthermore, we don't understand our microbiome very well at this point, so so there may be some fatal failure without some specific microbe. I expect that even the humans raised in sterile environments still have some functional microbiome inherited from their mothers.

Mice are probably a bad choice for modelling germ-free life for humans. Their digestive system is different, and their life spans are much shorter. From another site: 'Experiments done on guinea pigs have shown that animals raised in a sterile environment without any bacteria are malnourished and die young.'
 

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,679
Location
Alberta
The microbiome is never the cause of a disease, but always changes only as a result of a disease.

That seems like an outrageously strong statement without proof. Counterexample: Helicobacter pylori causes ulcers. Do you consider fungal infection to not be a disease? Cholera and dysentry occur when those microbes become part of your microbiome.

Counterexample for your second statement: antibiotics aren't a disease, but they do alter your microbiome. Scrubbing with antibiotic cleanser alters your exterior microbiome.
 
Messages
61
That seems like an outrageously strong statement without proof. Counterexample: Helicobacter pylori causes ulcers. Do you consider fungal infection to not be a disease? Cholera and dysentry occur when those microbes become part of your microbiome.

Yeah, then, believe that the microbiome is healing us all. Microbiome Changes similar to ME are found eg in HIV. and what is the cause of HIV? right, not the microbiome, but a retrovirus.
 

JES

Senior Member
Messages
1,320
Yeah, then, believe that the microbiome is healing us all. Microbiome Changes similar to ME are found eg in HIV. and what is the cause of HIV? right, not the microbiome, but a retrovirus.

Virome, fungi, archaea and bacteria are all considered to be a part of the microbiome. It is pretty amazing actually to think that microbiome cells outnumber the number of human cells and what's more concerning, we have mostly no idea of what they are doing. So if anything, the microbiome has been heavily under-researched. The only way we can solve diseases is to look at them from every possible angle. Alzheimer's researchers spent decades now studying amyloid plaques in the brain and trialed hundreds of drugs for it, which all failed.

Yeah, then, believe that the microbiome is healing us all.

This is by definition the idea behind FMTs. If we had accessible, affordable and safe ways of delivering FMTs or FMT capsules, I would be willing to try it tomorrow.
 

FMMM1

Senior Member
Messages
513
I get excited by moments like this where they make additional findings in basic research. The more it is clear we don't even know what's happening in the human body, the more the lack of an explanation for MECFS makes sense.

I was reminded of this when I watched Maureen Hanson's presentation at the Invest in ME Conference 2019 [http://www.investinme.org/IIMEC14.shtml - 14 minutes from the start i.e. to the end (8 minutes in total)]. Exosome signalling - potentially why ME has been so difficult to understand, diagnose ---.