Does bacteria define our DNA ?
I've been doing my own research on bacteria lately, and specifically how often bad bacteria is present in our urine. (a lot of false positives ? , or just that we're full of bad bacteria)
Pretty much most agree that there are trillions of types of bacteria in a human body. My question is, is bacteria part of our DNA ? Or does it help define our DNA ? Or can it change our DNA throughout our lifespan ?
thanks a million, i'm trying to learn more about this.
Update:Some scientists have even posited the theory that the rising rate of baffling autoimmune conditions
like lupus or Crohn's disease in modern society could be a result of how over-sterilized and clean we
are.
Interesting theory, but I think the opposite in this regard. That the rise in chronic health disorders including the ones you mentioned, psoriasis and others is because of our bad economy and people resorting to 'more' fast food. Fast food is slowly sickening us all. All the anti-biotics they inject cows with these days....the antibiotics eventually get eatin by the host. Slowly people develop yeast overgrowths, which lead to leaky gut / IBS.... and from there an endless list of health disorders pop up. Our obesity epidemic only complicates factors further more.
Psoriasis CAN be genetic. But it can also occur in people with no genetic defects at all to it. It's at this point where diet and stress could be the sole trigger. Leaky gut / IBS I f
Comments
Well, first off all, bacteria should not be in your urine. This is referred to as a urinary tract infection (UTI). You do not want one, and if you get one, you'll know. So hopefully you are seeing false positives.
Second of all, while trillions of bacteria do reside in your body (about 10x more bacteria cells than host cells) there are only up to around 1000 different species.
However, bacteria are not part of our DNA, meaning that they are not produced by the host (humans). Bacteria also do not help define our DNA, our DNA is defined by nucleotide bases which define us. These sequences are given to us by our parents. Now, I will say that bacteria can have an affect on us evolutionarily. The majority reason that we have bacteria in our bodies is actually for our benefit as well as theirs. Bacteria are an essential element in our digestive systems in which they break down substances we otherwise couldn't. It is likely that we evolved along with certain bacteria (through their influences on us and our influences on them) to build up this commensal relationship between us. However, this kind of evolution does not take place over one persons lifespan and is actually the result of mutations which are reinforced through natural selection (Basically, you have a mutation that helps the bacteria help you, this causes you to be a better human and increases the chances that you will survive, have offspring, and pass on this new gene). But this mutation is independent of the bacteria.
Something interesting, but also based on theory is the idea that our eukaryotic cells (a cell with a nucleus and membrane bound organelles) have been thought to have evolved from one bacteria being engulfed by an archaea. The archaea is thought as what we classical think of as our cells, while the engulfed bacteria became the mitochondria (the power station of the cell). In fact, the mitochondria reproduceseparatelyly of the rest of the cell and has its own set of genes.
There are 100s of species of bacteria possibly in the gut, each with its own population as part of the healthy intestinal flora, but they are isolated to the digestive tract. They do not have access to the body unless through a wound or by a pathogen's infectious mechanism. Even then the immune system normal destroys invaders very rapidly or the infection causes a disease.
The bacteria reside in the lower digestive tract, not the urinary tract; urine is sterile unless you have contracted a bladder Infection. The only way the urine stream can show a false positive for an infection is by picking up bacteria exiting the urethra. Urine tests are done on midstream urine catches to avoid that problem.
Gut bacteria cannot transform the host's DNA. If this were the case there would be very high genetic homology between bacterial genomes and regions of our own, and that is not the case.
People before me seem to have tackled the question of false positives quite well so I'm going to address the still intensely-studied topic of bacteria in our body. Recent research in microbiology is revealing that most of the trillions of bacteria that are present in our body are beneficial to us, but not by changing our DNA. Instead, they participate directly in the mechanisms that occur in certain sites in our body. For example, scientists have recently discovered that a certain type of bacterium actually plays a role in immunity. Our T-lymphocytes, who guard against antigens and harmful invasions in general, multiply and aggressively attack the invaders. The newly discovered bacterium produces regulatory T-cells to check the T-cells' aggressiveness so they don't start attacking our own body tissues after they've disposed of the antigens.
Some scientists have even posited the theory that the rising rate of baffling autoimmune conditions like lupus or Crohn's disease in modern society could be a result of how over-sterilized and clean we are. By being too careful about what you eat and washing your hands or not letting your kids play in the dirt, we might actually be killing - or not even picking up - bacteria that would protect us from ourselves! There are many more examples and the nitty-gritty is a bit more complicated than this simple summary I've given you but from this you can appreciate that bacteria, while it doesn't interact with or become part of our DNA, interacts with the millions of processes occurring in our body. Most of these are beneficial and bacteria have gotten a bad rap because of a combination of too much attention on disease-causing bacteria and not enough understanding of the extremely close relationship we share with the organism.
If you're wondering about what can cause changes in DNA, it can be things like mutations. You can look this up in more detail later but mutations actually cause changes in DNA sequences. Some of these changes may result in serious consequences but some may not (the latter are known as silent mutations). There is a rapidly expanding sub-field of molecular biology known as epigenetics that involves environmental effects on DNA. The fascinating thing about epigenetics is that the environment can sometimes "switch on" or "switch off" genes without even changing the sequence! Some environmental triggers that do this can include alcohol or drug intake, stress, or exercise. If you are interested in finding out more about this, do some research on epigenetics and you will be able to appreciate that even if bacteria don't interact with our genetic material, our DNA is definitely not immune to changes triggered by external stimuli.
DNA reproduces all out lives, yes. Evolution doesn't occur on mistakes considering that it is going to only impact the cells that modify and multiply, the relaxation of the body will maintain the original code. Evolution might arise if sperm or eggs are mutated but then you definitely ought to look forward to the subsequent new release. Mistakes are traditionally dangerous leading to the ageing process as the telomeres wear out and many times cancer.
I am not sure about your research but I know that bacteria (e-coli) survives in appendix region. few bacteria are definitely needful...:)
no chromosomes do