Many years ago most scientists believed that simply mapping out all the human genes would allow us to predict how our bodies worked. “Cracking the DNA code” that makes up the human genome would usher in a new era of health and human advancement. It hasn’t happen yet for a number of reasons. One of … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Gut
1.1 HOLOBIONT
Ancient humans were as obsessed with their bodies as the average American, but they thought big. They saw how an eye could create a river. They determined that a rib held up the sky. They figured the sun and the moon were the heads of decapitated twin gods. They knew the body was everything, but … Continue reading
Can Poop Fix Your Kid’s Behavior (A Reponse)
In 2010, I read for the first time about Fecal Microbiota Transplants (FMT – though back then, they were just called Fecal Transplants); I quickly emailed my Science Partner in Crime, “Fecal transplants are going to be the weight loss strategy of the future. People are going to get shit enemas from Twiggy to be … Continue reading
The Challenges of Hacking the Human Holobiont
At the beginning of this month, a “Brief Report” in OFID (Open Forum of Infectious Diseases) described a case where a woman who suffered from both C. difficile and H. pylori infections was treated and cured with a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) donated from her daughter. Certainly, FMT treatment’s popularity is on the rise. A … Continue reading
Thinking Small
The last four years have been about small things: microbes to be exact. I’ve read some pretty amazing studies on bacteria and viruses in the gut and made my share of speculations on where all this human as ecosystem research is going. Some great thinkers have rightly noted that we need to change how we think … Continue reading
Guts Matter
We are all split. From the moment a haploid sperm cell meets a haploid egg, the resulting diploid’s very existence depends on its being able to divide. For the first act of creation, a rift is formed in cellular DNA: the double helix is ripped apart to be copied by protein machinery, mended, only to … Continue reading
The Viral Elephant in the Room
The past few years has garnered a lot of public attention on the roughly three pounds of tiny inhabitants that occupy the human gut. And rightly so, our microbiota (which outnumbers our human cells by a factor of 10) are proving to be a vital key to understanding the human not as a sterile organism … Continue reading
