evolution

[William Flynn Wallace]

I read today in Neuroscience News that gut microbes control our body's temperature.

I assume that they are not there at birth, though they could have been picked up via the birth canal.

How does it happen that entirely separate organisms come to regulate any body function?  I reckon that you could ask the same thing about gut microbes making chemicals for the brain.

bill w

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 21, 2023 at 10:58 AM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I read today in Neuroscience News that gut microbes control our body's temperature. I assume that they are not there at birth, though they could have been picked up via the birth canal. How does it happen that entirely separate organisms come to regulate any body function? 

Evolution can and has pushed very different organisms into parasitic or symbiotic relationships. For example, Nitrogen-fixing bacteria can perform the very difficult process of using molecular N2 nitrogen in the air to make NH3 ammonia, and unlike the nitrogen in the air, plants such as soybeans and other legumes can use the Nitrogen in ammonia. It's very difficult to split the N2 molecule because it's a triple bond and one of the strongest in all of chemistry, but Nitrogen-fixing bacteria has managed to master the trick of doing so. Soybeans provide nourishment to the Nitrogen-fixing bacteria. and the bacteria provides nitrogen rich fertilizer to the plant.  Neither the plant nor the bacteria can survive without the other.

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

Thanks John.  What I have trouble getting my head around is how the process started.  I understand the process whereby mitochondria becomes part of our cells, but not how we become reliant on gut microbes. Ditto skin microbes - without them our skin is horrible, as attested to by lab animals who had all their skin microbes killed.   Did they just invade and take over?!   bill w

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 21, 2023 at 3:11 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I understand the process whereby mitochondria becomes part of our cells, but not how we become reliant on gut microbes. 

Bacteria are going to be in the gut no matter what, and some of them produce waste products like vitamin B, K, and other water soluble nutrients that we need, so we don't need to make as much ourselves and in some cases the bacteria does such a good job we don't need to make any. Because of random mutation some individuals will have genes that produce conditions in the gut that are especially good for those nutrient producing bacteria and bad for bacteria that don't do that. And bacteria that have genes that produce more of those valuable nutrients will thrive better because their host will live longer.  

John K Clark

 

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[William Flynn Wallace]

Thanks John - that helps.  But a swarm of microbes don't get into the stomach knowing how to make neurotransmitters, eh?   "Hey, the transmitters in the brain are running low.  Let's learn how to make them!"   bill w

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 21, 2023 at 5:27 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks John - that helps.  But a swarm of microbes don't get into the stomach knowing how to make neurotransmitters, eh?   "Hey, the transmitters in the brain are running low.  Let's learn how to make them!"   

Bacteria already know how to make most Neurotransmitters because most of them are small simple chemicals that are the basic building blocks for many other things besides Neurotransmitters. For example, 3 of the most important and ubiquitous Neurotransmitters are just the very common amino acids Glycine C₂H₅NO₂ and Glutamate C5H9NO4 and Aspartate C5H9NO4, and they are among the 20 amino acids that are the building blocks of every protein in your body.

John K Clark

[John Clark]

Correction: the formula for Aspartate is not C5H9NO4 , that's Glutamate. The formula for Aspartate is
 C4H7NO4.

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

John, let's anthropomorphize a bit here:  how would bacteria get the idea to make anything our body can use, rather than just sit there and eat what we put down the tubes?  bill w

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 8:50 AM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John, let's anthropomorphize a bit here:  how would bacteria get the idea to make anything our body can use, rather than just sit there and eat what we put down the tubes?  bill w

 

Bacteria don't have ideas but, as I have said, they can make neurotransmitters, and if by random mutation one of a bacteria's genes causes it to make more neurotransmitters than average, and if that new ability changes a host's behavior in such a way that it increases the chance the bacteria's mutated gene will get into the next generation, then the mutated bacteria will soon become the predominant type of bacteria in the host. This example is about fungus not bacteria, but it's the same general idea :

How a Zombie Fungus Takes Over Ants’ Bodies to Control Their Minds

"When the fungus infects a carpenter ant, it grows through the insect’s body, draining it of nutrients and hijacking its mind. Over the course of a week, it compels the ant to leave the safety of its nest and ascend a nearby plant stem. It stops the ant at a height of 25 centimeters—a zone with precisely the right temperature and humidity for the fungus to grow. It forces the ant to permanently lock its mandibles around a leaf. Eventually, it sends a long stalk through the ant’s head, growing into a bulbous capsule full of spores. And because the ant typically climbs a leaf that overhangs its colony’s foraging trails, the fungal spores rain down onto its sisters below, zombifying them in turn."

It's hard to believe but the idea that morality could be found in nature was very popular around 1900 in the Social Darwinism movement. Ironically Darwin himself was not a Social Darwinist, and he lost his religious faith because he thought a God that sanctioned a hideously cruel process like Natural Selection did not deserve worship.  He writes that he was very disturbed at the reproductive behavior of a species of wasp that he discovered as a young  man. The wasp stings a spider enough to paralyze it but not enough to kill it,  the wasp then lays its eggs on the poor beast. When the eggs hatch several days later the maggots slowly consume the still living creature, carefully  avoiding
vital organs for as long as possible and leaving the brain for last.

In spite of the objections of his very religious but loving wife, Darwin says in his 1876  autobiography :

        "Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate but at last was        
        complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have        
        never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion        
        was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish        
        Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text        
        seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would      
        include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be
        everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine."

John K Clark

 

[William Flynn Wallace]

Continuing the anthropomorphism:

John, out of zillions of chemicals that microbes could make, how did they decide to make something like dopamine?  How did they decide to take over the person's temperature regulation?  bill w

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 12:28 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Continuing the anthropomorphism:

John, out of zillions of chemicals that microbes could make, how did they decide to make something like dopamine? 

Dopamine is a simple chemical, C8H11NO2, and it has other biochemical uses besides being a neurotransmitter; it must have because potato plants and bananas produce dopamine and they don't even have nerves, much less a brain. So it's not surprising that bacteria, which are masters of chemical engineering, can make dopamine too.

> How did they decide to take over the person's temperature regulation?  bill w

The answer remains the same. If regulating a host's temperature conveys an advantage in the struggle for existence and if a bacteria is able to do that even slightly better than average then bacteria like that will become more common than those that don't have that ability. 

John K Clark

On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 8:47 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 8:50 AM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John, let's anthropomorphize a bit here:  how would bacteria get the idea to make anything our body can use, rather than just sit there and eat what we put down the tubes?  bill w

 

Bacteria don't have ideas but, as I have said, they can make neurotransmitters, and if by random mutation one of a bacteria's genes causes it to make more neurotransmitters than average, and if that new ability changes a host's behavior in such a way that it increases the chance the bacteria's mutated gene will get into the next generation, then the mutated bacteria will soon become the predominant type of bacteria in the host. This example is about fungus not bacteria, but it's the same general idea :

How a Zombie Fungus Takes Over Ants’ Bodies to Control Their Minds

"When the fungus infects a carpenter ant, it grows through the insect’s body, draining it of nutrients and hijacking its mind. Over the course of a week, it compels the ant to leave the safety of its nest and ascend a nearby plant stem. It stops the ant at a height of 25 centimeters—a zone with precisely the right temperature and humidity for the fungus to grow. It forces the ant to permanently lock its mandibles around a leaf. Eventually, it sends a long stalk through the ant’s head, growing into a bulbous capsule full of spores. And because the ant typically climbs a leaf that overhangs its colony’s foraging trails, the fungal spores rain down onto its sisters below, zombifying them in turn."

It's hard to believe but the idea that morality could be found in nature was very popular around 1900 in the Social Darwinism movement. Ironically Darwin himself was not a Social Darwinist, and he lost his religious faith because he thought a God that sanctioned a hideously cruel process like Natural Selection did not deserve worship.  He writes that he was very disturbed at the reproductive behavior of a species of wasp that he discovered as a young  man. The wasp stings a spider enough to paralyze it but not enough to kill it,  the wasp then lays its eggs on the poor beast. When the eggs hatch several days later the maggots slowly consume the still living creature, carefully  avoiding
vital organs for as long as possible and leaving the brain for last.

In spite of the objections of his very religious but loving wife, Darwin says in his 1876  autobiography :

        "Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate but at last was        
        complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have        
        never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion        
        was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish        
        Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text        
        seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would      
        include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be
        everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine."

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

I think you are evading the question a little bit.  My question really is not what happens when they make chemicals that we can use.  That's easy - evolution.

  It's how the Hell did it get started.  bill w

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 2:53 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think you are evading the question a little bit.  My question really is not what happens when they make chemicals that we can use.  That's easy - evolution.

 It's how the Hell did it get started.  bill w

How did what get started?  Living organisms made dopamine for their own biochemical reasons that had nothing to do with being a neurotransmitter and started doing so millions of years before the human race even evolved.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

 

On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 1:31 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 12:28 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Continuing the anthropomorphism:

John, out of zillions of chemicals that microbes could make, how did they decide to make something like dopamine? 

Dopamine is a simple chemical, C8H11NO2, and it has other biochemical uses besides being a neurotransmitter; it must have because potato plants and bananas produce dopamine and they don't even have nerves, much less a brain. So it's not surprising that bacteria, which are masters of chemical engineering, can make dopamine too.

> How did they decide to take over the person's temperature regulation?  bill w

The answer remains the same. If regulating a host's temperature conveys an advantage in the struggle for existence and if a bacteria is able to do that even slightly better than average then bacteria like that will become more common than those that don't have that ability. 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

 

On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 8:47 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 8:50 AM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John, let's anthropomorphize a bit here:  how would bacteria get the idea to make anything our body can use, rather than just sit there and eat what we put down the tubes?  bill w

 

Bacteria don't have ideas but, as I have said, they can make neurotransmitters, and if by random mutation one of a bacteria's genes causes it to make more neurotransmitters than average, and if that new ability changes a host's behavior in such a way that it increases the chance the bacteria's mutated gene will get into the next generation, then the mutated bacteria will soon become the predominant type of bacteria in the host. This example is about fungus not bacteria, but it's the same general idea :

How a Zombie Fungus Takes Over Ants’ Bodies to Control Their Minds

"When the fungus infects a carpenter ant, it grows through the insect’s body, draining it of nutrients and hijacking its mind. Over the course of a week, it compels the ant to leave the safety of its nest and ascend a nearby plant stem. It stops the ant at a height of 25 centimeters—a zone with precisely the right temperature and humidity for the fungus to grow. It forces the ant to permanently lock its mandibles around a leaf. Eventually, it sends a long stalk through the ant’s head, growing into a bulbous capsule full of spores. And because the ant typically climbs a leaf that overhangs its colony’s foraging trails, the fungal spores rain down onto its sisters below, zombifying them in turn."

It's hard to believe but the idea that morality could be found in nature was very popular around 1900 in the Social Darwinism movement. Ironically Darwin himself was not a Social Darwinist, and he lost his religious faith because he thought a God that sanctioned a hideously cruel process like Natural Selection did not deserve worship.  He writes that he was very disturbed at the reproductive behavior of a species of wasp that he discovered as a young  man. The wasp stings a spider enough to paralyze it but not enough to kill it,  the wasp then lays its eggs on the poor beast. When the eggs hatch several days later the maggots slowly consume the still living creature, carefully  avoiding
vital organs for as long as possible and leaving the brain for last.

In spite of the objections of his very religious but loving wife, Darwin says in his 1876  autobiography :

        "Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate but at last was        
        complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have        
        never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion        
        was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish        
        Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text        
        seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would      
        include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be
        everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine."

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

[William Flynn Wallace]

Well, now you are making sense.  Thanks   bill w

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