Translator: Domenico Aloisio Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
You can't see it with the human eye, but if you look under a microscope
you would see there's tons of microorganisms
all over your hand.
Hi, I'm Julia Peterson,
and today I'll be discussing the microbiome with you.
So currently we have 7.4 billion people living on our planet,
and over time you can see there has been an exponential increase in population.
And part of this is due to improvements with healthcare,
which have allowed for an increase in life expectancy per individual.
And one aspect of health care that we've been quite concerned with
is fighting off certain microorganisms
such as bacteria, protists and fungus.
And we're so concerned with trying to fight these off,
we create substances such as hand sanitizer,
which eliminates 99.99% of the bacteria on your skin,
and antibiotics.
And these products are creating issues with our society
such as creating superbugs.
This here is an image from a book my mom used to read to me as a child.
It's called "Germs! Germs! Germs!"
by Bobby Katz.
And the whole book discusses how there's these little organisms in the environment,
and how they can make you sick and ill.
And so they always say in the book to wash your hands
and a bunch of other things to keep and maintain a healthy life.
I specifically remember this one part in the book
where this little girl falls and scrapes her knee,
and all these microorganisms are trying to get into her cut and make it infected.
And although this is true,
we do have certain microorganisms that do make you sick,
I think we make a generalization at quite a young age
that all these microorganisms in our environment make you ill.
But in fact, this is quite untrue.
So if we think of the classical statistic,
for every one human cell
there's 10 bacterial cells covering a person's body.
That's quite a ton, so that's saying the majority of a person is bacteria.
And we're not always sick,
so they must be providing a neutral effect for our health
or providing a benefit.
And this is actually what science does show.
And if you were to remove all the microbes on a person's body, they would die.
And this is because we live in symbiosis with these organisms.
Furthermore,
science has shown certain microbes to provide a health benefit for us
such as reducing our chances of brain diseases,
and developing asthma and obesity.
And an example of one particular bacteria is Lactobacillus johnsonii.
And I know much about this bacterium because I was involved with it
with my internship last summer in the Nicholas Lukacs Laboratory
of the University of Michigan.
And their lab investigates the gut microbiome.
And they're specifically interested in this particular bacteria
because it has been shown to reduce the inflammation
upon certain respiratory infections and diseases
such as respiratory syncytial virus
and asthma.
And although having inflammation is a positive,
it's showing your body is fighting off whatever's foreign inside of it,
having an excessive amount can actually be detrimental for your body
just as much as not having enough.
So there's this healthy range of inflammation that's best for your body.
So with certain diseases, infections such as asthma
and respiratory syncytial virus
that causes excessive inflammation in your body,
if you can find ways to reduce that into this healthy range,
this is beneficial for your health,
and this is what Lactobacillus johnsonii does.
Another interesting fact about it
is that its growth is shown to be promoted around animals.
And one study compared households
containing pets and not containing pets,
and they noticed more people had asthma in these households with pets than not.
And they analyzed the bacterial populations in these houses,
and they noticed them to be very significantly different.
And one of the bacteria that was significantly different
was Lactobacillus johnsonii.
And it was shown to be significantly higher
in these households containing pets.
So this leads to the question
why first world countries have such a high prevalence of asthma.
And it simply could be that we're just too clean,
and we're eliminating these healthy microbes from our environment
when we should be living with them together.
And science shows this to be quite important for pregnant ladies
because a person's microbiome is set at a very young age.
So if pregnant ladies can stay in an environment with these microbes
or be ingesting them;
for example certain foods like sauerkraut and yogurt
containing a lot of Lactobacillus johnsonii,
so if you eat much of these foods
you'll increase your uptake of this bacteria.
So if pregnant ladies do this,
she can set her child for a healthy inflammation response
for the rest of her life, so the baby has a good health.
And not only can a mother pass microbes to her baby,
it has also been shown that a person can pass microbes to a complete stranger.
And in the past they have been trying to find ways to do this,
and just recently they have found a successful method.
And this is by taking feces from a healthy individual
and transplanting it into an ill individual
in order to promote a healthier microbiome in these sick people.
And it's shown, like I said, to be very successful.
Science has also suggested that we could use microbiomes
to determine suspects at a crime
because everybody's microbiome is individualized.
And furthermore, it could be the reason
for why one twin develops autism and another doesn't.
So, there are only 7.4 billion people in this world,
and only a few understand the importance of the microbiome.
So I think we should continue to research
and imagine the possibilities it can bring to us.
Thank you.
(Applause)