Dark Matter: The New Science of the Microbiome

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We are only now beginning to understand the importance of the gut microbiome: could this be the start of a golden age for gut-health science? Dr Ben Mullish, a clinical scientist at Imperial College London, was running a trial of FMT in patients with C diff infections. And an antibiotic drip was cleansing me of my foes, bacteria – after all, they had inflamed my appendix. We are going to need to understand more of the importance of microbiome to our health as the looming future of antibiotics becoming redundant is fast approaching. The particular strain of C diff in Raymond’s gut had engaged in an aggressive campaign of molecular warfare.

James Kinross Can our microbiome save us? A ThinkIn with Dr James Kinross

He and Jonathan Wolf, a machine-learning and data science expert, founded ZOE four years ago with the aim of creating personalised diets based on what an individual’s specific gut microbes needed.The microbiome is like a convergent science – you have to be an ecologist, a geneticist, a bioinformatician, a clinician and an epidemiologist, to try to make sense of it.

Dark Matter by James Kinross - Penguin Books New Zealand Dark Matter by James Kinross - Penguin Books New Zealand

He is also a practicing colorectal surgeon in the NHS with a clinical interest in the prevention and treatment of colon cancer.The human microbiome represents the most important new therapeutic target that we have for treating the greatest threats to human life in the 21st century and for preventing future pandemics of pathogens.

Dark Matter by James Kinross | Waterstones

It is gifted to us by our mothers at birth, adapts with us as we age, influences our moods and appetites, determines how fast we run and even affects who we choose as a partner. As a result, at the time of writing in the UK and the US, recurrent C diff is the only clinical condition for which regulatory bodies have approved the use of FMT. This procedure involves a flexible telescope that is passed into the colon through the bottom, and the bowel is gently coated in the soothing balm of microbes, which are passed through the colonoscope using a syringe. Instead, Dr Kinross recommends: “I would sit down with my doctor and ask, what medicines am I taking that I don’t really need to be on? In this backward world, shit has become a therapy, used to replenish our delicate internal ecosystems, which are being lost as quickly as they are being discovered.

Professor Jack Gilbert is an award-winning microbiome scientist at the University of California San Diego and author of Dirt I s Good. When my patients come to see me, I spend a lot of time talking about how they are feeling,” he adds. It’s a bustling community of trillions of bacteria, archaea, fungi and viruses, containing at least 150 times more genes than the human genome. Do I really need to be on medicines to control my blood lipid chemistry or are there things that I could change in my lifestyle that would reduce my blood cholesterol?