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:
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!
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