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Ulcerative Colitis
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Posted 9/8/2013 10:04 PM (GMT 0)
No crazy break through but thought I'd share this... not that this is a surprise to any of us.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/518931/understanding-our-gut-microbes-could-lead-to-new-medicines/
Posted 9/8/2013 10:26 PM (GMT 0)
This is pretty awesome actually... the more people/companies that dig into this type of work and focus on inflammatory diseases the more hope we have in correcting whatever the heck is wrong.

Very cool. Thanks for posting. Encouraging news I think.

PS - When/if a large portion of the private biotech industry starts to focus on this and develop findings/treatment ideas and such the government usually follows with big research cash. So again a double benefit perhaps.
Posted 9/9/2013 4:27 PM (GMT 0)
NPR had some coverage of the microbiome just this morning www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/09/09/219381741/from-birth-our-microbes-become-as-personal-as-a-fingerprint

I believe that the use of DNA sequencing technology to identify microbes may prove to be one of the most significant advances of the last few decades. Prior, microbes ahd to be grown on cultures,and then ID'ed and tallied under a microscope. Very labor intensive. This new technology allows researchers unparallelled ability to see and study symbiotic microbes.

Post Edited (DBwithUC) : 9/9/2013 10:30:19 AM (GMT-6)

Posted 9/10/2013 3:55 PM (GMT 0)
The biggest problem with microbiome research is that there's just so much data, it's hard to figure out what's meaningful. Especially since microbiomes vary tremendously from person to person. Hence, research in this area is slow, albeit steady.

Also, DB, culturing fecal microbes isn't super labor intensive, but identifying them is. There's also the issue where there are a number of commensal microbes that you absolutely cannot culture-the only way to detect them is presence of protein/DNA in samples.
Posted 9/10/2013 3:59 PM (GMT 0)
I was taking culturing and identification as part and parcel because it does no good to culture if you do not subsequently identify.

Also some microbes will not grow in culture in the presence of air. I guess this falls under "cannot culture"

Like I said, the new DNA techniques are revolutionizing things. @Malkavian: Why does it seem like you think I said otherwise?
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