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Science

Modern City Dwellers Have Lost About Half Their Gut Microbes (science.org) 59

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Comparing genomes of intestinal bacteria in various primates and human populations begins to pinpoint the possibly helpful microbes that have gone missing from our guts. From a report: Deep in the human gut, myriad "good" bacteria and other microbes help us digest our food, as well as keep us healthy by affecting our immune, metabolic, and nervous systems. Some of these humble microbial assistants have been in our guts since before humans became human -- certain gut microbes are found in almost all primates, suggesting they first colonized a common ancestor. But humans have also lost many of these helpers found in other primates and may be losing even more as people around the world continue to flock to cities, a researcher reported last week at a microbiology meeting in Washington, D.C. Those absent gut microbes could affect human health, he says.

"This work helps us develop a new understanding of the course of human biological and cultural development," says Lev Tsypin, a microbiology graduate student at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the new study. The microbiome comprises all the bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microscopic life that inhabit an individual, be it a person, a plant, or a planaria. For humans and many other species, the best characterized microbiome centers on the bacteria in the gut. The more microbiologists study these gut microbes, the more they link the bacteria to functions of their hosts. In humans, for example, gut bacteria influence how the immune system responds to pathogens and allergens, or interact with the brain, affecting mood.

Andrew Moeller, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell University, was one of the first to show that gut bacteria and humans have built these relationships over a very long time. Six years ago, he and colleagues reported the work showing human gut microbes are very similar to those in other primates, suggesting their intestinal presence predates the evolution of humans. But his follow-up studies, and work by others, also indicate the human gut microbiome has, in a general sense, become less diverse than the gut microbes in our current primate cousins. One study found 85 microbial genera, such as Bacteroides and Bifidobacterium, in the guts of wild apes, but just 55 in people in U.S. cities. Splitting the difference, people in less developed parts of the world have between 60 and 65 of those bacterial groups, an observation that ties the decrease in microbial diversity to urbanization.
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Modern City Dwellers Have Lost About Half Their Gut Microbes More

Modern City Dwellers Have Lost About Half Their Gut Microbes

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  • Rural people cost more to connect to the internet. So they demand taxpayer subsidies for broadband. They want their cake and eat it.

    Urban people should get subsidies to compensate for their lifestyle. I demand: nice views, plenty of space, quiet, cheap land, wildlife, and yes... gut bacteria. Thank you, taxpayers.

    • Rural people cost more to connect to the internet.

      I'm pretty sure you can't download bacteria from the internet, but maybe that'll be in Starlink 2.0. Someone should tell Musk to get on it.

      Seriously though, it's probably the well water. My younger brother has a place that's a little off the beaten path and his water comes out looking like weak tea. It's absolutely disgusting. I've got city water, and while it is crystal clear, there's probably a small grain of truth to the former president's suggestion of "drinking disinfectant" - it always smells very

    • 1) wtf does this have to do with the subject? and 2) without those urban folk city folk would have no food, no resources (materials) to build anything or make clothing or pretty much anything and in most cases no laborers to build anything.

      • It's not fair that the rural folk should have the gut microbes. And without the city folk, they would not have internet. Fair is fair, we pay for the internet, they pay for our microbes.

        • NO FOOD FOR YOU!

        • It's not fair that the rural folk should have the gut microbes. And without the city folk, they would not have internet. Fair is fair, we pay for the internet, they pay for our microbes.

          To be fair.

          People have survived a LONG LONG time before there was an internet, and they actually still do today without it.

          It is not a necessity of life.

          Gut flora, well, that pretty much IS needed to sustain life.

          However, you can do things to increase the health of yours even living in a city.

          It is easy to ferment your

        • And without the city folk, they would not have internet.

          Yeah well without the rural folk you wouldn't have the ability to sustain city life, so I think on the balance of importance your internet connection doesn't really qualify.

          Not all things are equal. But then you know that and are just trolling. At least I hope you are.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • "There has been no massive social migration to cities in 200 years."

          Depending on how you define "massive", if you believe the US Census bureau, its doesn't agree with you...

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • Sure, the US has been experimenting with suburban sprawl and forced "rural" living for 70 years, which has been a colossal social and environmental disaster, enough for many people to try to come back to the cities that were destroyed as part of this, but we still don't actually have enough "city" for the population to live in, so most people are still trapped in fucking suburbs.

          Trapped?

          Lol...I think you project a bit too much.

          Myself and my friends that live around me, would NOT be happy living in a very

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Not worth the risk. Last time we tried to take the welfare and privilege away they elected Trump.

    • Rural people cost more to connect to the internet. So they demand taxpayer subsidies for broadband. They want their cake and eat it.

      Urban people should get subsidies to compensate for their lifestyle. I demand: nice views, plenty of space, quiet, cheap land, wildlife, and yes... gut bacteria. Thank you, taxpayers.

      Your post lost something in translation?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      At least a rent/mortgage subsidy to compensate for higher housing costs and for thos that own a car, a parking subsidy sumethingg akin the the supswedy you get on fuel in very remote areas to compansate for longer transport of said

    • Rural people cost more to connect to the internet. So they demand taxpayer subsidies for broadband. They want their cake and eat it.

      There's nothing stopping you from moving to the countryside for that sweet sweet subsidized internet.
      Except maybe a healthy dose of common sense.

      • Yes, come out and enjoy our subsidized internet! You too can enjoy 5mb/s (on a good day) DSL as your ONLY option for the low-low subsidized price of only $60/month!
    • Which ones are demanding subsidies? I know subsidies are being granted, but who asked for them? The people in rural areas overwhelmingly voted against the people who insist on providing said subsidies, so I don't know if that's an accurate attribution. I know that I personally have done the exact opposite and said the government is wasting money by trying to roll fiber in areas that will be sooner and better served by Starlink.
  • The fecal transplant jokes write themselves.
  • > Those absent gut microbes could affect human health, he says.

    In a good way or bad way depending on diet, ingested viruses, and who knows what else. It needs a LOT more study before we say this is a good or bad thing for those city dwellers.
    • that keeps coming up when we look into obesity. It's a fact that if you do a fecal transplant from a fatty to a thinny that thinny is going to start gaining weight. Our cities aren't any less walkable than they were 20 years ago and obesity rates keep going up. People are working a lot more hours though, including kids (who have had their academic workload increased) and there's been lots of cuts to things like recess and the minor athletics (football gets all the $$$) so that might factor in too, but the l
      • Funniest people are those who drive around the fitness center parking lot, trying to find a spot closer to the entrance!

        If they were smart enough to realize the walk from distant parking spot to the entrance itself would be a good warm up, they would not be signing up for a hefty monthly fee fitness center in the first place!

      • But it doesn't seem like the poor gut fauna is making urbanites fatter. From a 2018 article [webmd.com]:

        Health experts said they are puzzled by the studies' results, given the popular notion that urban dwellers have less access to healthy food and regular physical labor than rural dwellers.

        "I wasn't surprised that obesity was a problem in rural areas. I was just surprised that it was higher than in urban areas. I kind of expected it to be the other way," said Dr. Robert Wergin, a country doctor in Milford, Neb. He's also past president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

        My guess is that people in exurban and rural areas have machines that do the aerobic portion of their "manual labor," drive every place further than the barn, and choose to eat huge quantities of garbage.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      I suspect it is neutral if you eat a processed diet. Few people, even middle class in the developing world, ever see food that isnâ(TM)t from a factory. infants are raised on processed formula, not mothers milk. Babies eat puréed fruit and powered food. Then we mechanically removed meat, and the lost goes on. Eat more complete food, get more Bactria.
      • >Eat more complete food, get more Bactria. Can you prove that's a good thing? As I said, we need a lot more research to even know whether more bacterial diversity (let alone what types) is good for a particular person. (let alone good for everyone)

  • Combination of diet and mono-culture (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @05:47PM (#62658150) Homepage

    We transfer gut biomes to each other each time we shake hands with the person that did NOT wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Biomes that survive in a people rich environment (i.e. a city) can easily tend towards uniformity.

    Then throw in a what is basically a monoculture of food consisting of high amounts of protein (beef, chicken, turkey, pork) carbs (potatoe, rice, wheat, corn) plus a few plants (fruit, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes) and suddenly you get the gut biomes that do well in those conditions.

    In the wild, apes tend to eat a more diverse diet:

    most Fruits (the apesâ(TM) preferred food!)
    many Leaves, Flowers, Seeds, Bamboo shoots, stems, termites, insects, larvae, spiders, and small birds.

    Note when humans eat two species of birds, apes eat pretty much any species of bird they can catch. Similar with seeds, fruits, etc.

    You want the gut biome of an ape? Start eating more insects and plants not sold in a grocery store.

    • Re:Combination of diet and mono-culture (Score:4, Interesting)

      by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @06:08PM (#62658192)

      You want the gut biome of an ape? Start eating more insects and plants not sold in a grocery store.

      Reminds me of the line in the movie Sneakers where Liz is fake dating the guy they're trying to use to get access to Playtronices. He's in the kitchen making supper and prattling on about this or that, then says out of nowhere that the ideal diet is found in the bottom of a monkey cage. He then goes on to explain about all the things monkeys eat.

      In short, diversity is key.

    • Perhaps we don't need to go that far. Let's just stop over-processing and eating over-processed food. Over-processed food doesn't mean uncooked, it only means food that could be prepared using simple tools like knives. Again, this doesn't mean not using a blender or food processor. Just blend your ingredients for seconds rather than until it turns into baby food (smoothie).

      By the way, gut bacteria doesn't necessarily mean eating dirt or drinking unfiltered water from the stream behind your house. There are

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by vivian ( 156520 )

      Speaking of throwing in things, they seem to have an edge on us in sharing their gut biomes with each other too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cstacy ( 534252 )

      In the wild, apes tend to eat a more diverse diet:

      You want the gut biome of an ape? Start eating more insects and plants not sold in a grocery store.

      All my gut bacteria, GONE !!

  • Wait a sec (Score:3, Funny)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @05:47PM (#62658152) Homepage

    Aren't urban dwellers supposed to be more cultured?

  • The summary does not say urbanites have half the amount of microbes found in the wild ape guts. It says they have about 55 genera, while wild apes have 85 genera and urbanites from less developed countries have about 65 genera.

    Number of microbes run into several trillion. It is possible the urban diet in developed countries allow some 55 genera to thrive and overwhelm the sampling while the other 30 genera are in very small numbers, surviving somehow, bidding their time and when the diet is more favorable to them, they will multiply and become more substantial.

    It is possible the genera count is probably a measure of lack of variation in diet.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      My Genera count is 1 because I ate a Symbolics lisp machine.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cstacy ( 534252 )

        My Genera count is 1 because I ate a Symbolics lisp machine.

        Mine is even higher because I drink regularly from the Cold Load Stream in the woods behind my house.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      The summary doesn't say "urbanites from less developed countries". It just says "people in less developed parts of the world", leaving it very unclear on what basis reference is made to urbanisation (as opposed to e.g. the diet of the average US resident compared to the average resident of wherever the comparison group is). I broke the rules of /. and tried to find the original paper, but the website of the lab whose work is being reported on doesn't even have a link to a preprint.

  • I know, I know - the blaming of food additives for health issues smacks of New Age granola- crunching pseudo-science. But at least one class of food additives has been scientifically demonstrated under controlled lab conditions to negatively alter the gut microbiome [nih.gov].

    Emulsifiers such as carboxymethylcellulose, carrageenan, soy lecithin, and polysorbate 80, (to name just a few), attack the intestinal mucous which forms the barrier between the gut and the bloodstream.This is bad, both because it allows things

  • City dwellers are more likely to use them.

  • When you use antibiotics, you kill all kinds of bacteria. Both the bad AND the good. Same is true of anti-bacterial agents. Seems pretty obvious to me but, hey, we needed to spend tax dollars on this I guess. The next thing we'll learn is that water is wet.

  • Cities are the sunsets of civilization (Score:3)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2022 @09:08PM (#62658530)

    Cities are the sunsets of civilization. Monuments to an exhausted landscape

    Man is migratory by nature and what you’re feeling is instinct. A hunger for new land that’s woven into your DNA. It’s the reason our species survived when countless others failed. That tingle is the sensation of touching your destiny.

    - Dan Jenkins, Yellowstone

    • Man is migratory by nature

      Nice quote as it is, this couldn't be further from the truth. Some people are migratory, others by choice have never even left their own state. Those who live in cities often migrate to other cities.

      In general there's nothing in nature which has nurtured humans to seek out nature, in fact we have ample evidence for the contrary.

  • I hope the actual paper is better but there's a noticeable gap between what's claimed and the evidence they show: "but just 55 in people in U.S. cities. Splitting the difference, people in less developed parts of the world have between 60 and 65 of those bacterial groups, an observation that ties the decrease in microbial diversity to urbanization."

    For instance, what are "less developed parts of the world"? Are they talking about a small village in Africa or Saigon?

    And there's more than Cities in the US (or

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      There doesn't seem to be an actual paper yet. The article is reporting on some kind of presentation at a conference (I'm not sure whether it's a talk or a poster), but the lab's publications page doesn't even list a preprint on the bioRxiv.

      • There doesn't seem to be an actual paper yet. The article is reporting on some kind of presentation at a conference (I'm not sure whether it's a talk or a poster), but the lab's publications page doesn't even list a preprint on the bioRxiv.

        To city vs development actually seems fairly important when it comes to cause.

        If it's really the city the cause may be that city dwellers spend too much time in offices and even when they're outdoors there's no wilderness. In that case more time in nature might have a positive effect.

        Or if it's development it might be because our food is more processed and potentially even has some antibiotics still active.

        Or depending on the "less developed" comparison cases it might be specific classes of food like fermen

        • Or or, wait for it, evolution is at play and we don't need them any more.

          "Kyle Meyer, a microbiologist at UC Berkeley, argues such losses are not necessarily a problem. “Maybe we don’t need them,” he points out. " https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]

          The point is this was poorly written article. The title as pure clear click bait. This is not science. This is sensationalism.

          Why aren't we morning the loss of the wisdom teeth...wait, because we don't need them.

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