Why Don’t Microbes Make Us Feel Better?

[Tunn11]

There are lots of organisms that are symbiotic in one way or another. Lichens are a fungus and an algae and have presumably had many millions of years to evolve this symbiosis. Darwin’s moth can only have had 60 million years o so, since the origin of flowering plants to develop the exclusive pollinator arrangement.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news...darwin-and-wallace-becomes-a-new-species.html

Various micro organisms have been around for a very long time and mutate quickly, so why not one that enhances its “victim”?

Many trigger an immune response and/or make their victims ill or kill them. Ok coughing and spluttering etc. help spread the infector but how much better would it be if the micro organism enhanced the victim to be stronger, live longer, be more sexually attractive, etc. thus enabling it to spread the infecting organism more efficiently?

I don’t know of any examples (aside from IIRC Red Dwarf’s DJ virus that made the victims incurably cheerful)

Are there any; and if not why not?

 

[Xanatic*]

There are those infections which cause some kind of autobrewing in the body, making you drunk. You also have toxoplasmosis gondii, which in humans might make us less fearful in general.

 

[gordonrutter]

Of all of the cells in your body only 10% are human the remaining 90% are microbes. They do all sorts ok things ranging from keeping nasty infections at bay to helping digest certain foods. Without them our oives might indeed be shorter.

 

[Endlessly Amazed]

Thanks, Gordonrutter! OK, once again it is confirmed that this forum is one of the weirder ones in existence.

Where do these bacteria come from in a newborn infant?

 

[Mythopoeika]

Thanks, Gordonrutter! OK, once again it is confirmed that this forum is one of the weirder ones in existence.

Where do these bacteria come from in a newborn infant?

From placental blood, mother's milk and so on.
The environment once it is born - that's why close contact with parents is a good thing, among many other reasons.

 

[bugmum]

The theory is that the mitochondria that live in every cell, to provide energy for cellular processes, were originally some kind of symbiotic organism that crept in and stayed with us. This is why you only ever inherit your mother's mitochondrial DNA.

 

[bugmum]

Plus there have been recent discoveries of microorganisms that target tumours and are thus potentially a treatment for certain types of cancer.

 

[JaneD]

Thanks, Gordonrutter! OK, once again it is confirmed that this forum is one of the weirder ones in existence.

Where do these bacteria come from in a newborn infant?

I gather one picks up a lot of useful ‘stuff’ on the way down the birth canal

 

[Bad Bungle]

The theory is that the mitochondria that live in every cell, to provide energy for cellular processes, were originally some kind of symbiotic organism that crept in and stayed with us. This is why you only ever inherit your mother's mitochondrial DNA.

I never really got a good answer as to why only the maternal mitochondrial DNA is inherited. Best suggestion was that it is a numbers game - maternal egg is packed with mitochrondria prior to multiple cell division after fertilisation. Paternal sperm has the vast concentration of its mitochondria located at the base of the tail so it can swim relatively long distances - but the tail is lost when the head penetrates the egg. So the fertilised egg contains practically only the mother's mitochondrial DNA.

 

[gordonrutter]

I never really got a good answer as to why only the maternal mitochondrial DNA is inherited. Best suggestion was that it is a numbers game - maternal egg is packed with mitochrondria prior to multiple cell division after fertilisation. Paternal sperm has the vast concentration of its mitochondria located at the base of the tail so it can swim relatively long distances - but the tail is lost when the head penetrates the egg. So the fertilised egg contains practically only the mother's mitochondrial DNA.

That's basically it. The only bits the egg needs are the nucleus and the centriole, as far as I know the rest does not survive so the male mitochondria are lost from the system completely.

 

[eburacum]

Trillions of viruses in our body do no harm, and some are beneficial, and some have become incorporated into our own genome, with positive results..
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-hu...f-viruses-inside-your-body-keeping-you-alive/

Only a small fraction – less than 2 per cent – of our DNA codes for the direct production of protein molecules (in a process known as transcription), and biologists used to think the rest was non-functional – some even termed it ‘junk DNA’. Now, lots of this DNA is thought to be derived from previous virus insertions and we have discovered that it is highly important for regulating the transcription of other genes. Some virus genes do occur in human DNA regions that produce essential proteins. Over evolutionary history, these genes have been co-opted for the essential functioning of our bodies, so whether we should call them human or viral genes is unclear. A gene used in the development of the human placenta is borrowed from an endogenous retrovirus where it first evolved to make proteins that fuse host cells together. Through our evolutionary past, this process of gene-harvesting from across the tree of life seems to have occurred many times. It has been suggested that around 145 of our 20,000 genes have arisen from such horizontal gene transfer.

 

[charliebrown]

This conversation is a little confusing to me.

I eat yogurt with live active culture that is supposed to put billions of bacteria in my intestines.

This bacteria is supposed to help all kinds of medical problems.

So, I guess some types of bacteria are good.

 

[Mythopoeika]

This conversation is a little confusing to me.

I eat yogurt with live active culture that is supposed to put billions of bacteria in my intestines.

This bacteria is supposed to help all kinds of medical problems.

So, I guess some types of bacteria are good.

My Mum has that stuff every day. She says it has improved her gut.

 

[charliebrown]

I think live active cultured yogurt has helped my constipation problems which I am sure you don’t want to hear about.

 

[Tunn11]

So we live in symbiosis with countless microbes and they may have been instrumental in the evolution of multi cellular life.

Could they therefore have an effect on evolution that we don’t understand or have missed? Could for instance, the ascendancy of Homo sapiens over Homo neanderthalensis be down to different gut bacteria affecting their nutritional intake and giving them a different type of intelligence?

I once tried to write a piece speculating that various types of ESP and precognition were not down to the brain but to colonies of bacteria living in the gut (or elsewhere in the body) somehow influencing brain or nerve function. It was based on the idea that bacteria in the gut try to leave the body quickly if it is under threat and this could lead to them being picked up by another host. Put crudely a “brown trouser job” – but how often do your guts play up at even the hint of danger? Could they sense danger before it happens, hence do they have pre-cognitive ability?

However I don’t really have the expertise to know whether that is even a remote possibility - In fact the best bit would have been the title – “The truth is in there”.

 

[bugmum]

So we live in symbiosis with countless microbes and they may have been instrumental in the evolution of multi cellular life.

Could they therefore have an effect on evolution that we don’t understand or have missed? Could for instance, the ascendancy of Homo sapiens over Homo neanderthalensis be down to different gut bacteria affecting their nutritional intake and giving them a different type of intelligence?

I once tried to write a piece speculating that various types of ESP and precognition were not down to the brain but to colonies of bacteria living in the gut (or elsewhere in the body) somehow influencing brain or nerve function. It was based on the idea that bacteria in the gut try to leave the body quickly if it is under threat and this could lead to them being picked up by another host. Put crudely a “brown trouser job” – but how often do your guts play up at even the hint of danger? Could they sense danger before it happens, hence do they have pre-cognitive ability?

However I don’t really have the expertise to know whether that is even a remote possibility - In fact the best bit would have been the title – “The truth is in there”.

a little light reading to start you on your way?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6580755/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5534492/