Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by SubiculumCode on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @02:35AM
(#18439332)
But you left off supporting evidence from mouse models: "So she looked at healthy mouse brains, which were preserved immediately after the mice were killed. More bacteria. Then she looked at the brains of germ-free mice, which are carefully raised to be devoid of microbial life. They were uniformly clean."
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by b_tterc_p on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @08:14AM
(#18440666)
I had no idea we could sustain germ-free life. That's so cool. The obvious evidence that seems to be missing, however, would just be to extract brain tissue from a living animal, no?
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by singularity2001 on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @08:54AM
(#18440896)
that very much contradicts my model of organisms as well.
I thought we ARE 95% germs, DNA wise.
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by jessriedel on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @09:56AM
(#18441360)
Prokaryotes are thousands of times smaller in mass/volume, so most cells (and maybe even most DNA) can be bacteria while these are nonetheless minor players.
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by Bartweiss on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @12:27PM
(#18442762)
This is definitely part of it, the estimates claiming 90% bacteria by cell count end up suggesting perhaps a half gallon of actual bacterial volume. As far as DNA, I think the parent stat can't hold for base pairs. Not as a volume issue, but because mammalian genomes are ~3 orders of magnitude larger than bacterial ones. Even at a 10:1 cell count, our base pairs would be 99% human.
Most importantly, though, the 10:1 stat is just outdated. Newer estimates put the number around 1.3:1 instead.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by jessriedel on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @01:19PM
(#18443296)
This comment was super interesting, thank you.
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by etatoby on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @11:52AM
(#18442442)
A side note to passing readers: thousands of times smaller in mass or volume means of course only tens of times smaller in diameter, which agrees with the pictures shown in the article and elsewhere.
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by jessriedel on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @01:09PM
(#18443188)
Yea. The comparison of humans to cockroaches is a useful intuition. Or blue whales to cats.
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by marcosdumay on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @11:02AM
(#18441950)
That does nothing to rule out contamination from a different tissue.
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by SubiculumCode on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @11:58AM
(#18442506)
Different methods. Same result. But sure, you can't prove a negative.
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by go_blue_13 on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @01:39PM
(#18443509)
How could one possibly rule out contamination by this logic?
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by marcosdumay on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @07:58PM
(#18446425)
By using some procedure that controls for contamination from a different tissue, instead of having no relation to it.
Re:Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”
by supercheetah on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @01:40AM
(#18448020)
The truth is that it will probably be hard to find conclusive evidence unless we look for this in a living brain.
> Roberts wondered whether bacteria from the gut could have leaked from blood vessels into the brain in the hours between a person’s death and the brain’s removal.
> Roberts acknowledges that her team still needs to rule out contamination. For example, could microbes from the air or from surgical instruments make it into the tissue during brain extraction?