News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Tantalizing but preliminary evidence of a “brain microbiome”. Parent comment

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?
[ Parent | on HN ]
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]
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Most importantly, though, the 10:1 stat is just outdated.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...

[ Parent | on HN ]
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]