Human microbiome churns out thousands of tiny novel proteins

[sl8]

From http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/08/human-microbiome-churns-out-thousands-of-tiny-novel-proteins.html

Human microbiome churns out thousands of tiny novel proteins

The bacteria in our gut make thousands of tiny, previously unidentified proteins that could shed light on human health and advance drug development, Stanford researchers have found.

AUG 8 2019



Ami Bhatt and her collaborators found that microbes in the human gut are making thousands of proteins so small that they've previously gone undetected.
Norbert von der Groeben

Your body is a wonderland. A wonderland teeming with trillions of bacteria, that is. But it’s not as horrifying as it might sound. In fact, there’s mounting evidence that many aspects of our health are closely intertwined with the composition and hardiness of our microscopic compatriots, though exactly how is still mostly unclear.

Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that these microbial hitchhikers — collectively known as the human microbiome — are churning out tens of thousands of proteins so small that they’ve gone unnoticed in previous studies. The proteins belong to more than 4,000 new biological families predicted to be involved in, among other processes, the warfare waged among different bacterial strains as they vie for primacy in coveted biological niches, the cell-to-cell communication between microbes and their unwitting hosts, and the critical day-to-day housekeeping duties that keep the bacteria happy and healthy.

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Link:
Large-Scale Analyses of Human Microbiomes Reveal Thousands of Small, Novel Genes
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.07.016

[in2herbs]

1. I don't have a medical degree but I did some research about this a while back and the research

suggested that our gut is our first brain and what we call our brain is our second brain. And when you think about it they may be right. For example, your gut is where you first realize fear, your brain is where you decipher the message from the gut. The use of probiotics to keep and maintain healthy gut bacteria has been used for treatment of schizophrenia in humans and to curb stallion-like behavior in stallions and other aggressive horses.