Posted 2/14/2014 11:35 PM (GMT 0)
Hey NCOT - I wouldn't worry to much about that. That's what I meant about feeling dumb now even asking because everything "suggests" it should be perfectly fine, whereas before I had no idea - but I was still curious and wanted to ask.
Not sure what that study was but recall it being mentioned but I think it was as well misunderstood. That whole thread is full of wrong things and misunderstood things anyway.
(This comes from two of my textbooks)
As far as Germ Free goes:
- Overall they (germ free animals) actually have fewer diseases and even live longer when kept in the germ free environment. So this tells us that the gut flora is NOT needed to thrive. At the same time it tells us that the gut flora IS actually a source of infections that shorten our lifetime.
- Take them out of this environment however and wham - they usually die very fast due to a hyperactive response to pathogenic bacterial exposure and inability to defend against some pathogenic bacteria. Equally interesting though, take them out of this environment and put them with other conventional or normal animals and their gut bacteria composition will look the same soon. So this shows they acquire the new bacterial make-up from their environment and can actually be colonized. But even though they now have a similar intestinal bacterial make-up they are less tolerant and can die from infection from bacterial species that are somewhat harmless to normal/conventional animals.
So the above is interesting from an evolutionary or adaptive perspective where their bodies (organs) are physically different and geared towards functioning within their specific environment.
- We seem to have a trade off - we give up life span for the ability to resist/deal with bacterial infection (so immune system development) and for easier access to specific required nutrients.
- Interestingly their immune response to virus and parasites are very similar to conventional/normal mice. So again pointing to bacteria as a wild card I guess you could say and the role of adaptive immunity in regards to bacteria.
It's kind of all quite interesting.
Also there is physical differences in the appearances of their organs - specially their intestines - but this is again more due to adaption to extract the required nutrients/vitamins etc etc. So their intestines are actually more suited or ummm, more "efficient" in many ways. They thrive very, very well and live very long lives when they can eat whenever they want and access required nutrients from their diets (non-scheduled or restricted feeding) - There's a Latin term for this but looking back I can't find what it was called. Does not matter.