{"id":20717,"date":"2016-01-13T13:46:51","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T21:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/does-our-microbiome-control-us-or-do-we-control-it"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:16:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:16:00","slug":"does-our-microbiome-control-us-or-do-we-control-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/does-our-microbiome-control-us-or-do-we-control-it","title":{"rendered":"Does our Microbiome Control Us or Do We Control It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This is an interesting conjecture.<\/p>\n

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We may be able to keep our gut in check after all. That\u2019s the tantalizing finding from a new study<\/a> published today that reveals a way that mice\u2014and potentially humans\u2014can control the makeup and behavior of their gut microbiome. Such a prospect upends the popular notion that the complex ecosystem of germs residing in our guts essentially acts as our puppet master, altering brain biochemistry even as it tends to our immune system, wards off infection and helps us break down our supersized burger and fries.<\/p>\n

In a series of elaborate experiments researchers from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital discovered that mouse poop is chock full of tiny, noncoding RNAs called microRNAs from their gastrointestinal (GI) tracts and that these biomolecules appear to shape and regulate the microbiome. \u201cWe\u2019ve known about how microbes can influence your health for a few years now and in a way we\u2019ve always suspected it\u2019s a two-way process, but never really pinned it down that well,\u201d says Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King\u2019s College London, not involved with the new study. \u201cThis [new work] explains quite nicely the two-way interaction between microbes and us, and it shows the relationship going the other way\u2014which is fascinating,\u201d says Spector, author of The Diet Myth: Why the Secret to Health and Weight Loss Is Already in Your Gut<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, human feces share 17 types of microRNAs with the mice, which may portend similar mechanisms in humans, the researchers found. It could also potentially open new treatment approaches involving microRNA transplantations. \u201cObviously that raises the immediate question: \u2018Where do the microRNAs come from and why are they there?,\u2019\u201d says senior author Howard Weiner, a neurologist at both Harvard and Brigham. The work was published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an interesting conjecture. We may be able to keep our gut in check after all. That\u2019s the tantalizing finding from a new study published today that reveals a way that mice\u2014and potentially humans\u2014can control the makeup and behavior of their gut microbiome. Such a prospect upends the popular notion that the complex ecosystem [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":363,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,1506,412,1495,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-food","category-genetics","category-health","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/363"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20717"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68851,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20717\/revisions\/68851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}