Poop Study: People Have Friendly Gut Viruses

[Ignis]

It’s not just the bugs in our guts that are surprisingly friendly. It’s our viruses, too.

After slowly coming to appreciate the importance of symbiotic bacteria for running our bodies, scientists have wondered whether viruses also help. Now a gene-hunting expedition in the gut has found it teeming with highly personalized viral communities.

“Viral diversity and life cycles are poorly understood in the human gut and other body habitats,” wrote researchers led by Washington University microbiologist Jeffrey Gordon in a study in the July 14 Nature. Unlike gut bacteria, these viruses — our “virome” — appear uniquely individual, differing even between identical twins.

(...snip...)

More than 4,000 different viral strains were ultimately identified, 80 percent of which hadn’t been seen before. Despite the novelty, the researchers could match individual genes to known functions. This doesn’t show the targets of those functions, but it’s possible that “viral genes are just providing that little something that bacteria don’t have,” said Gewirtz.

-- Wired @ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/gut-viruses/

The discovery of the microbiome has led to some amazing new directions in research into digestion, obesity, etc. Here's hoping that this new discovery does the same. :thumbsup:

[YOY]

1. I know what names I'm giving several of my friendly gut viruses!

n/t

[Ignis]

6. Droopy, Corny, and SBD?

:spank:

[YOY]

7. No but they do fit those profiles as well!

n.t.

[Schema Thing]

2. well crap, now I can't leave poop at my crime scenes

which is pretty much what makes them crime scenes in the first place.

[Ignis]

4. No more upper-deckers for you, eh?

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjE4MTk4NjgxOV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTE4NDYyMQ@@._V1._SX510_SY755_.jpg

[Warpy]

3. Some of them could also be bacteriophages

which are viruses that attack bacteria, one reason the nasty ones like Clostridium dificile (which most of us are colonized with) don't gain enough of a foothold in healthy people to make them sick.

It's interesting that we all have a distinct viral profile.

[Ignis]

5. Yeah, I'm surprised that wasn't discussed in the article.

But I haven't read the abstract of the study yet, so perhaps the researchers cover it there. :shrug:

You did catch what I consider to be the most important part of the article, however. :) :thumbsup: Imagine how this could shape the way we treat GI problems in a decade or two.