Time for a name change

This bit is well overdue……

Science is a process of investigation. We ask questions, find answers, and expand our knowledge. It never stops. Everything we know is under constant scrutiny and re-examination. Sometimes what we thought was the most likely answer turns out to be incorrect, or needs a slight change.

What am I rambling on about? Well when I set this blog up I named it “Ten2one”. I had intended to eventually write a piece explaining the background to this name. Two years on however, it seems the name is no longer accurate. The blog name was derived from a widely held concept at the time; that the number of human cells in our body are outnumbered by the microbes living in and on us (link here). The number of microbes was thought to be ten times that of human cells, outnumbering us 10 to 1.

As microbiologists, this was great news. The critters we study are top of the pile and we live in a world dominated by the wonderful microbes. This figure however was not widely accepted and after much more counting, the actual ratio of human cells to bacteria cells in the human body has been revised down to a 1:1 ratio (link here). This is a great example of the constant improvement in our knowledge, even in a short amount of time. Science never stops.

While this might seem like a big drop, we are still living our daily lives in the company of an equal number of microbial companions. Still though, the new information means I must change the name of my blog. It wouldn’t be good to stick with such an inaccuracy.

In all honesty, I hadn’t spent too long coming up with the first name. This time maybe I can get some good suggestions from you. Please feel free to drop some suggestions into the comments below and I’ll make a change in the coming weeks.…..

Finish the course?

You go in to the doctor feeling quite unwell. They prescribe you a course of antibiotics and say "Finish the entire course". This message is repeated to you by the pharmacist once you collect your drugs.
Indeed, I say the same thing to my own family and friends when they tell me they have started a course of antibiotics.

But why?

The discovery of penicillin and subsequently several other antibiotics was a landmark in the improvement of human health (nice read). Infections that killed millions could now be treated. The microbes however don't give in that easily. Bacteria evolve readily to changes around them and soon after we started using antibiotics, we started to see bacteria that had resistance to them.

Antibiotic resistance is now listed as one of the key challenges to global health by the United Nations. Regularly we see reports of more and more bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics. To curb this, we need to better manage the usage of antibiotics (and find new antimicrobials of course).

By not finishing a course of antibiotics, not only do you risk suffering a relapse of the illness but you may also provide the opportunity for the bacteria to develop resistance. This concept is based on the idea that you will not have used enough antibiotic to kill all the bacteria and a small few that had developed resistance to the low dose can now emerge and cause a greater problem.

Is this an accurate assumption though?

An opinion article recently published in The British Medical Journal has stoked the debate on this issue
(Article found here). The authors claim that the notion of finishing a course of antibiotics is not backed by clear evidence from robust trials. Resistance does not seem to emerge as a result of shortened treatment and extended use can do more harm than good. The article however does not actually cover in any depth what this harm may be.

As an alternative to the rule of "finish the course", the authors suggest that instead we could consider a rule of "stop treatment when they feel better". The big problem with this however is that it is very subjective. When we are sick, we can often have periods of temporary respite from the pain for one reason or another. Improvements in how we feel are measured against how bad we have just felt rather than how we used to feel when we were fit and healthy. This means there is a great risk of us stopping antibiotic treatment too early.

Already the scientific and medical community have responded to this article with words of caution (here). Clearly we need to build evidence to back both sides of this debate.

What is important however, is that despite all the news headlines this article is drawing, it is not a definitive answer. It is just a comment on a crucial area of medicine. I worry that headlines like "British exerts discredit 'complete the course' advise on antibiotics" confuse things and suggest there is a new consensus on the issue. Best practice remains to see your antibiotic course out until the end.

If you want to learn more about antibiotic resistance, the World Health Organisation has a nice site here.

And now for the news from Sligo

A little bit behind the crowd on this one and it's been far too long since I last posted but what better way to get the ball rolling again than to talk about research coming out of Sligo. After all, there is no point calling all this Sligo Microbe if I don't highlight the output from the North West.

 

The work I'm talking about is of course the paper by Prof. Suresh Pillai (link below), from IT Sligo, which has identified a chemical mixture that can be used as an anti-microbial coating. All this came to my attention after the large amount of media coverage that the work received; it was even picked up by The Guardian in the UK.

(https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/15/the-innovators-irish-coating-superbug-mrsa-e-coli)

 

The excitement heralded in all the news reports described this work as a defence against "superbugs", in particular the deadly MRSA. However after reading the actual publication I was left a little perplexed. It would appear that this is yet another example of scientific findings being taken out of context*.

 

The work itself and the development of this surface is genuinely great work. As I am not a material scientist or physicist, my full understanding of the finer details is limited but, put simply, this group has developed a coating of titanium dioxide with copper and fluorine, which when activated by light could kill bacteria.

 

What puzzled me was, nowhere in this paper is there a conclusion drawn that the coating will kill MRSA or any other supposed "superbug". The coating is only tested against a single strain of Staphylococcus aureus which is not MRSA. The potential future applications, in terms of medical device coatings and even mobile phones may well play out but certainly more evidence for a role in killing "superbugs" is required.

 

I would hope that people take that extra step when reading science related media articles to look up the original source or at least approach these media reports with a degree of caution.

 

As you will undoubtedly have seen elsewhere in the news over the last few days, there is a serious problem with bacteria which have become resistant to the antimicrobials we use to kill them. As time passes, the antibiotics we use to treat infections are becoming less and less effective. It's great to see that a research group from Sligo is helping in the fight to combat this threat. Hopefully we will hear much more of this story as more work is carried out.

 

Link to published article: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep24770

 

 

*For anyone interested in looking into this more, they should check out the great piece done recently by John Oliver which gives a good overview of how scientific findings and their messages get changed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Microbes in our home

I thought I would spark off this blog again with a small piece on an interesting recent study carried out by scientists in the USA. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1814/20151139. As part of their work, they looked at the different populations of microbes that were found in the dust sent in from almost 1200 homes. It may not be ground-breaking science but the work shows what microbial diversity can exist in our homes, a place we spend the majority of our time. If nothing else it’s always nice to know who you are living with!

What was cool is that homes could be separated based on whether it was men or women living in them. The results showed higher amounts of bacteria called Roseburia in the male homes. This bacterium is commonly found in our gut and thought to play a healthy role. The male homes also saw more Corynebacterium and Dermabacter which are bacteria found on the skin. In the female homes, there was a higher level Lactobacilli. While found throughout the gut it is also the predominant bacteria found in a healthy vagina. The main reason thought to be for the differences seen is simply down to different hygiene practices.

Of course bacteria were not the only microbes found and lots of different types of fungi were also found. The types of fungi changed depending on which part of the country the dust samples came from.

The biggest difference between houses was seen if you owned a pet or not. There were 56 types of bacteria that were found more in the homes with a pet than without. From the data the researchers were actually able to tell you whether it was a cat or a dog living in the home. These pets were leaving their own fingerprint of microbes around the house.

As a side thought on the whole study, I see that the work was part of a citizen science project that asked for people to send in samples http://homes.yourwildlife.org/. This is a great way to get people involved in science however I find it odd that the results are then published in a closed journal rather than open source. Perhaps that’s a debate for another day…

 

Transgenic recipe

A food I eat a lot of is sweet potato. Many people like to classify it as a so called “superfood” (no such thing) and list out its wonderful properties. I like it because it tastes great and stores well. Only last night I tucked into a nice dish of sweet potato and chick pea curry, slightly modified from the version found on this blog: https://canalcook.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/sweet-potato-spinach-and-chickpea-curry/. Try it out, it’s good.

So three posts in to a blog about microbes and you must be wondering have I lost the plot already! Not quite.

Every now and then you will see much debate over genetically modified foods or GMOs. These are also referred to as transgenic crops, a term less tarnished by detractors. The process of making a GMO involves taking a gene from one organism and putting it into another. For food crops the overall aim can be to give them a better chance of surviving disease, to increase yield or perhaps give them a uniform appearance. Much of the argument against modifying our food claims that humans should not be interfering with nature and there are fears that what we create will destroy natural ecosystems. I don’t wish to get into a debate on this right now but I thought I would just mention a paper that has recently been published in the journal PNAS (http://www.pnas.org/content/112/18/5844.full.pdf). Here comes the microbiology.

It would appear that bacteria are already creating transgenic food. While looking at the genomes of plants that produce sweet potato, the researchers of this paper discovered that genes from a bacteria species called Agrobacterium spp. were found in a large proportion of the plants they examined. These genes have been incorporated into the genome of the plant and the plant is now expressing the genes as if they were its own. In fact, of the plants that are used to produce the sweet potatoes we eat, all the ones examined were found to have genes from Agrobacterium spp. In fact, the researchers believe that the one or more of the genes could be the reason why early humans chose to selectively cultivate the particular breed still used today.

Although the transfer of genes from bacteria to bacteria and from bacteria to some other organisms is very common it is fascinating to see an example of a transgenic crop sitting on our dinner plates without us even knowing. Of course as the researchers point out in their paper, this finding could affect how unnatural we perceive transgenic crops. Enjoy your curry.

 

 

Kudos to Nicky O’Boyle for suggesting the paper.

Microbes and my weekend

This weekend I am meeting up with some friends who I have not met for a while. Over dinner I am sure we will enjoy a glass of wine or two. I like wine, whether to accompany a nice meal or while relaxing in front of the fire or watching TV. Of course I have microbes to thank for this pleasure.

Alcoholic drinks and microbes go hand in hand. Beer, wine and other such drinks are great examples of how microbes have influenced our lives. Alcoholic drinks are produced by a yeast called Saccharomyces cervesiae. The yeast uses sugars in grains or fruit to grow but in doing so produces alcohol as a waste product. This process is called fermentation and humans have been taking advantage of this natural metabolic process for a very long time. These days, companies harness fermentation to make litres and litres of beer to sell around the world but humans have been doing this for millennia (see John P. Arnolds book; ISBN 978-0-9662084-1-2).

Many people don’t realise the importance that wine has had on developing the whole field of microbiology and in doing so set in motion the discoveries of antibiotics, causative agents of infectious disease and food spoilage, biotechnology, recombinant insulin for diabetics, microbial fuel cells and so on. OK, maybe I am stretching it a bit but let me explain.

In 1856 one of the founding fathers on microbiology, Louis Pasteur, was approached by a wine maker to figure out why his wine spoiled during storage. Pasteur discovered that microorganisms were to blame and developed a method of mild heating (pasteurisation) to kill off these microbes and prevent future spoilage. With his interest piqued with these microbes, Pasteur went on to describe microbes that can grow without oxygen, microbes that cause disease in silk worms and laid a foundation for the development of proper hygiene in medicine thanks to Joseph Lister.

Of course, while I may enjoy my night out this weekend I have to be careful not to drink too much. If I do, I risk suffering the next morning. Anyone who has had a night of excess drinking will be all too familiar with the terrible hangover that comes knocking the following morning. Nausea, dizziness and headaches all lead to a rather nasty experience. While over consumption of a microbial waste product might get me drunk, recent research has shown that inebriation may not be the last time microbes play a role in my night out. Tim Spector at The Guardian wrote a nice piece on this:   

 (http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jun/21/why-is-my-hangover-so-bad).

 It would appear that after excessive drinking, the bacteria in our gut may produce large amounts of LPS and cause inflammation which makes us feel sick (Bala et al., 2014). This may be down to a change in the population of bacteria in the gut and to help stave off this event it seems that a high fibre diet reduces the effect (Canesso et al., 2014). It is known that a high fibre diet is important in order to maintain a healthy gut, one that is rich in different bacterial species.

Perhaps this knowledge will help me choose what to eat with my glass of wine this weekend!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog on all things related to the microbial world around us.

I hope to update regularly with snippets from the world of research, and aim to promote microbiology at an easy to understand level without too much complication. Also as articles appear in popular press I will try to appraise them for accuracy and correct any false information.

For the most part the content will be random but I hope you find it interesting.

Microbiology is a fascinating area of research and deals with a world that actually isn't as "unseen" as you are led to believe. While bacteria, viruses, fungi are for the most part tiny, the impact they have on our world is enormous! From our food to our buildings, from the air we breathe down to even our mood, microbes have a profound impact on our lives. Research in microbiology is fast paced and every day brings exciting new discoveries. Hopefully I can introduce you to some of these and point you in the right direction to go and discovery the wonderful world of microbiology.

Microbes under the microscope