Breast-Feeding the Microbiome • Hacker News Board

Re: Breast-Feeding the Microbiome

#51

Post by gus_massa » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 7:20 PM UTC

mkale wrote: post #46

jacalata wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be, but that's orthogonal to the point I was making, which was "yep actually human breastmilk is significantly different to chimpanzees".

Maybe. A chimpanzee is much closer to a human than a monkey, which already had ~500 of the ~1600 proteins.

I found a handy graph of the primate family: http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v15/n5/fig_tab/nrg3707_F1....

> The time of separation of the human lineage from the rhesus macaque lineage is dated at 28–25 million years ago, whereas the human and chimpanzee lineages are believed to have diverged ~9–5 million years ago.

Re: Breast-Feeding the Microbiome

#52

Post by jmhain » Wed, Jul 27, 2016, 4:16 PM UTC

serge2k wrote: post #7

I don't understand why HN is so obsessed with gut bacteria. I don't oppose posting it, I just don't understand the fascination.

Because gut issues have been implicated in a whole lot of common maladies, but the precise nature of the interactions of gut bacteria and their human hosts has yet to be determined, making it very intellectually intriguing. Especially for those of us with chronic conditions that are finally starting to see treatment success with carefully targeted probiotics or fecal transplants.

Re: Breast-Feeding the Microbiome

#53

Post by woodchuck64 » Wed, Jul 27, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #32

woodchuck64 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's literally seen as a medical revolution. "There is increasing evidence that the microbiome and its output (our interactome) touch many, if not most, pathways that affect health, disease, and aging. It is reasonable to propose that the composition of the microbiome and its activities are involved in most, if not all, of the biological processes that constitute human health and disease, as we proceed through…

Don't get too ahead of yourself. Sure we have a lot of evidence that your microbiome is important in things like C. difficile infection, but I've only seen very tenuous evidence supporting any impact on things like aging. Not to say it might be discovered in the future. But it also stands a good chance of being a dead end.

> Don't get too ahead of yourself.

That quote about aging is from Blaser:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_J._Blaser