MIT | No matter where you are, you are surrounded by your microbiome—the
complex biological system of more than 100 trillion microorganisms on
the human body, in airwaves, and in every environment.
“You may not know it, but you’re walking around with two pounds of
microbes on you,” says Bernat Olle SM ’05, MBA ’07, PhD ’07. “But only
recently have scientists discovered how important and how useful they
can be.”
Research in the field of the microbiome is still in its early stages,
but it has already shown that microbes play important roles in
metabolism, digestion, and even mood. And Olle is one of a growing group
of engineers focusing on this area.
“Modern habits have been to clean up and sterilize everything—make it
clean as possible,” he says. “But we’re starting to find out this might
not be a good idea—and we’re abusing anti-microbial chemicals. These
microbial exposures can help develop key human functions.”
Olle is co-founder and COO of Vedanta Biosciences, a Boston-based
startup that researches interactions between the human microbiome and
the immune system. He spoke to Slice of MIT at the 2015 South by
Southwest (SXSW) Interactive, where he was part of a three-person panel that discussed the benefits of microbes and the impact they could have on medicine in the future.
13 comments:
But we now know, from the first BBSs to 4chan, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter that the majority of the internet is used by feces-smearing monkeys.
Space: Ape in a can won't work. We got to haul all our little buddies up with us. In fact, the can to house us all will have to be a giant metabolizing bacterium ready to eat planetoids, breath solar atmosphere, and shit out infrastructure.
Precisely why so many gotta go, gotta go, gotta go...,
Thanks, I never heard of it. I'll have to read it.
But which ones are the feces-smearing monkeys. I don't recall how many sites I have been banned from. I'm not sure if it is a dozen yet. LOL
We'll haul up spores, germinate them, guide and nourish their macrostructural expression, and at some point insert our own heavily engineered selves into them as the equivalent of their gut bacteria...,
I still have the beautifully photographed Time Life books from the 60's in which I was introduced to ion propulsion http://johnkurman.blogspot.com/2011/01/small-world-to-live-on-big-universe-to_19.html and liquid breathing..., funny how little is known or depicted concerning this 50 year old technology
https://youtu.be/2OxstD2jN08
All of us. But some view the poop smoosh as a beautiful thing.
Like the LCL from "Neon Genesis: Evangelion."
Will need bioengineering and robot/android assistants as a part of any interstellar exploration (100-200 years).
Barring if humanity doesn't kill each other off or an extinction asteroid setting the technological development clock backward...
rotflmbao..., no Michael. "Humanity" has already doomed itself and the biosphere which sustains it. There are no interstellar "voyages of exploration" in the cards for doomed apes, and no apes in a can with "assistants".
What's in question here is whether there's enough time to engineer extremophile organisms capable of surviving a hot methane-heavy terrestrial atmosphere. Those same transhuman symbiological adaptations might serve to sustain a tiny, minimal regret population of something formerly human here on earth. Formerly human won't just be a fashion statement either http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-transhuman-jump-will-not-be.html
Okay, so no canned ape trips.
Rather than "Neon Genesis: Evangelion," something more like "Battle Angel Alita...Last Order, Kasei Senki". Cyborgs, nanobots that can end cell senescence, brain chips.
I'm getting up to speed with the ongoing mission of subrealism.
To keep my stupid questions to a minimum, I've gone back to the blog's origin and am working my way forward.
An excellent tactic that others around this jawnt should attempt. Not holding my breath...
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