Microbiomes

[Write4U]

I would surely like input from others.. It seems to me this is a ratehr obscure biological condition in all biological species including humans, which has been relatively obscure until recently acquired new knowledge and possible "communication" with our symbiont microbes (good bacteria) the micro-organisms that may assist the human defenses against external virulent (bad) bacteria.

mi·cro·bi·ome
/ˌmīkrōˈbīōm/
noun
plural noun: microbiomes

1. the microorganisms in a particular environment (including the body or a part of the body).
   "we depend on a vast army of microbes to stay alive: a microbiome that protects us against germs, breaks down food to release energy, and produces vitamins"
   • the combined genetic material of the microorganisms in a particular environment.
     "understanding the microbiome—human, animal, and environmental—is as important as the human genome"

1. • Microbiome

Some use “microbiome” to mean all the microbes in a community. We and others use it to mean the full collection of genes of all the microbes in a community. The human microbiome (all of our microbes’ genes) can be considered a counterpart to the human genome (all of our genes). The genes in our microbiome outnumber the genes in our genome by about 100 to 1.

https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/microbiome/changing/

Abstract
Humans are a unique reservoir of heterogeneous and vivacious group of microbes, which together forms the human-microbiome superorganism. Human gut serves as a home to over 100-1000 microbial species, which primarily modulate the host internal environment and thereby, play a major role in host health. This spectacular symbiotic relationship has attracted extensive research in this field. More specifically, these organisms play key roles in defense function, eupepsia along with catabolism and anabolism, and impact brain-gut responses. The emergence of microbiota with resistance and tolerance to existing conventional drugs and antibiotics has decreased the drug efficacies. Furthermore, the modern biotechnology mediated nano-encapsulated multiplex supplements appear to be high cost and inconvenient. Henceforth, a simple, low-cost, receptive and intrinsic approach to achieve health benefits is vital in the present era. Supplementation with probiotics, prebiotics, and synbiotics has shown promising results against various enteric pathogens due to their unique ability to compete with pathogenic microbiota for adhesion sites, to alienate pathogens or to stimulate, modulate and regulate the host's immune response by initiating the activation of specific genes in and outside the host intestinal tract. Probiotics have also been shown to regulate fat storage and stimulate intestinal angiogenesis. Hence, this study aims to underline the possible beneficial impact of probiotics for human health and medical sectors and for better lifestyle.

 

[Write4U]

A microbiota is an "ecological community of commensal, symbiotic and pathogenic microorganisms"[1][2] found in and on all multicellular organisms studied to date from plants to animals. A microbiota includes bacteria, archaea, protists, fungi and viruses. Microbiota have been found to be crucial for immunologic, hormonal and metabolic homeostasis of their host. The synonymous term microbiome describes either the collective genomes of the micro-organisms that reside in an environmental niche or the micro-organisms themselves.

The microbiome and host emerged during evolutionas a synergistic unit from epigenetics and genetic characteristics, sometimes collectively referred to as a holobiont.

Humans,
Main article: Human microbiota
The human microbiota includes bacteria, fungi, archaea and viruses. Micro-animals which live on the human body are excluded. The human microbiome refers to their genomes.

Humans are colonized by many microorganisms; the traditional estimate was that humans live with ten times more non-human cells than human cells; more recent estimates have lowered this to 3:1 and even to about 1:1.

The Human Microbiome Project sequenced the genome of the human microbiota, focusing particularly on the microbiota that normally inhabit the skin, mouth, nose, digestive tract, and vagina.[11] It reached a milestone in 2012 when it published initial results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiota

 

[Write4U]

We are learning to communicate with our microbiome symbionts.

 

[globali]

yes!! microbiota is a very interesting topic. We are barely starting to recognize their important role in the pathogenesis of diseases and their role in therapeutics.
Apart from their obvious role in the digestion of food (without them we cannot digest), they regulate the immune system. It is literally imposible to survive without them. It is like a separate organ. The total number of symbiotic bacteria in our bodies outnumbers the number of our own cells. It is thus crazy that the majority of the cells in our bodies are not "technically" ours.
What is interesting is that it raises many philosophical questions, like "are they a part of ourselves?" or "how can we define what is an individual organism?". This is one of the most controversial questions in biology together with the question whether viruses are living organisms.

My opinion is that the question is irrelevant, because they are all biochemical systems that interact. The sense of "self" or individual organisms comes from a special part of our brain responsible for the sense of "identity".

 

[Write4U]

What I find most interesting is that our ablity to learn bacterial chemical language allows us to keep them alive but inhibit their ability for quorum sensing and thereby solve the problem of creating resistant strains.

Instead of killing bad bacteria and thus artificially selecting for resistant strains, keeping the bacteria alive but unable to communicate and activate their virulence through quorum sensing does not create immunity, just inability to communicate at intraspecies level, while at the same time affecting population control of virulent species through interspecies comunication.

While this may seem science fiction, if we consider that bacteria have been around for billions of years and are the foundation for all subsequent evolution of species, it should not be a surprise that we can learn their (chemical) language and introduce chemical modification to their language and thus influence their behavior.

Facinating stuff.

p.s. squid, cuttlefish and octopi are remarkable creatures, almost totally alien to us but highly evolved and intelligent, both at subconscious and conscious level.

Cultivating a bioluminescent bacterial population in order to use its light producing abilities in order to become invisible to predators is just a wondrously (evolved) sophisticated ability.......

 

[Write4U]

This reminds me of the Dutch Tulip mania, which affected the entire commercial tulip trade in Holland.

Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) was a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulips reached extraordinarily high levels and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637.[2] It is generally considered the first recorded speculative bubble

Anonymous 17th-century watercolor of the Semper Augustus, famous for being the most expensive tulip sold during the tulip mania.
A tulip, known as "the Viceroy" (viseroij), displayed in the 1637 Dutch catalog Verzameling van een Meenigte Tulipaanen. Its bulb was offered for sale for between 3,000 and 4,200 guilders (florins) depending on size (aase).
(A skilled craftsworker at the time earned about 300 guilders a year.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

People traded entire farms for a few beautiful variegated tulip bulbs, which were later found to be diseased by bacterial infection.......ohh, those Dutch!

Today:

12 for $12.49

Multicoloured blooms reminiscent of tulips depicted by the Dutch Masters.
Recreate "Tulipomania" in your garden. That phenomenon gripped Holland in the 17th century and literally fortunes were spent for just a single bulb. Most prized were the Rembrandt Tulips, noted for their intriguing colour patterns. At last hybridizers have succeeded in creating these improved, superior, upmarket varieties so that we can offer them to you. Flowers bear an even more remarkable, striking resemblance to the tulips depicted by the Dutch Masters, hence their higher cost and value. This special mixture of modernday Rembrandt Tulips from Holland features a colourful array of feathered, variegated 4" blooms that are stunning in the garden and in bouquets.

https://www.brecks.com/product/Impr...MIu4yytafu4QIV5I5bCh23GAhTEAQYASABEgIYiPD_BwE

 

[Write4U]

An astounding extraordinary triple symbiotic relationship.

Lots of organisms rely on symbiotic relationships, in which two species rely on each other for survival and one lives inside the other. But citrus mealybugs enjoy a triply symbiotic relationship unlike any we've ever seen...with one absolutely crucial exception.

The bug must turn plant sap into nutrients, but it lacks the ability to do this on its own. It relies on the bacterium Tremblaya princeps to handle the conversion process...except this bacterium can't do it all either.

Instead, Tremblaya princeps handles one part of the conversion into amino acids, and then it hands things over to a second, smaller bacterium Moranella endobia. This bacterium lives inside Tremblaya princeps, and neither bacterium possesses the necessary complement of biomachinery to turn the plant sap into nutrients. So this means the mealybug relies on both bacteria equally for food, Moranella needs to be housed inside Tremblaya, and Tremblaya must survive inside the mealybug. It's the first triple symbiosis we've ever seen.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-ultimate-symbiosis-mealybugs-have-bacteria-living-5830671

In addition;

Mealybugs excrete a sweet, sticky substance called honeydew that attracts ants, which feed on the honeydew and protect the mealybugs from predatory insects. Honeydew also serves as an incubator for sooty mold, a black fungus that spreads over leaves and stems, interfering with photosynthesis. In severe cases, mealybugs and sooty mold infections can cause premature fruit drop. The problem is usually most noticeable in spring and again in the fall.

Chemical Control,
The University of California at Davis Integrated Pest Management website lists pesticides formulated with chlorpyrifos as effective against mealybugs, but it also kills beneficial insects present during application. The product has brief persistence on the citrus tree, and some predatory insects -- as well as mealybugs -- may return within a few days.

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/mealy-bugs-citrus-26552.html

Now imagine we can talk to all three symbionts and control their biome interaction by non-lethal quorum inhibiting chemicals.

 

[Write4U]

Another interesting lecture on our bacterial co-habitants which make us be and feel healthy as well as sick and depressed.

and

 

[Write4U]

To clarify some question posed in other threads, I feel this is an important posit in relation to the terms microbiotics and microbiomes, or in general the microbiome system of a living biological organisms.

Introduction.
The human microbiota (the ecological community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms present in our body) or microbiome (entire genome sequence of a microbial community) [1, 2] has recently emerged as an important factor in human physiology, both under homeostatic (health) and pathological conditions [3].

The microbiome is predominantly formed by bacteria but also comprises fungi, yeast, viruses, and archaea that live in our bodies, with each particular region of the body corresponding to a highly specialized niche characterized by its own microbial clusters, society dynamics, and interaction with the host tissue [4].

Remarkably, 90% of the cells in the human body are constituted by prokaryotic cells which form the microbiota [5] and participate in metabolic functions, contribute to the education of the immune system, protect against pathogenic microorganisms (Figure 1), and, through these basic functions, directly or indirectly, affect many of our physiological functions [6].

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4544440/

 

[Write4U]

More information about the microbiome system.

Figure 1: Location of normal microbial flora. Each of these areas of the body contain their own microenvironments and various inhabitants of microbes.

Figure 2: H. plyori creates it own microenvironment by burrowing into the mucosal lining of the stomach. Within the lining, the microbe is then able to avoid pH levels that would normally kill it. Here, it may also produce ulcers.
aspirin is not without danger: for instance it raises the risk of internal bleeding. Hence the important need to discuss beforehand with the doctor, "In my case, doc, should I be taking daily aspirin?
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/243265.php

The human body provides many unique environments for different bacterial communities to live. In this context, scientists refer to the human body as the host. A positive host-microbe relationship is usually described as either mutualistic or commensalistic. In mutualism both the host and the microbe benefit. Which is in contract to commensalisms, where one partner of the relationship benefits (usually the microbe) and the other partner (usually the host) is neither benefited nor harmed.

https://www.scq.ubc.ca/microbes-and-you-normal-flora/​

 

[mmatt9876]

So having a diverse and up to date microbiome helps us digest food better, helps reduce our allergies, and helps protect us from illness?

 

[Write4U]

So having a diverse and up to date microbiome helps us digest food better, helps reduce our allergies, and helps protect us from illness?

More than that, our microbiome keeps us alive. Without their symbiotic functions we'd surely die.

 

[Write4U]

T4 Bacteriophage useful in bacteria control?

Yes, this is a bacteriophage, and it’s pretty darn awesome. Really, who would have expected a structure this beautiful from a technically non-living entity?

Bacterio – related to bacteria
Phage – eater
So, yeah, this thing is an eater of bacteria. Certainly not human cells, and in fact, it is being studied (and in some places used) as a therapy to help fight human diseases.

https://www.cedarwrites.com/2016/10/06/myth-busting-bacteriophage/

And guess what shows up in the dynamic part of this micro-organism? Our dear friend the microtubule.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4275845/#!po=7.95455

Later......