Meta-genomics is when you want to discover the genetic background of a complex living system. Not just one individual genome, but many individual’s genome analyzed together. This poses a difficult bioinformatics challenge, like you want to sequence a small sample from the ocean, millions of microorganisms living in that tiny sip of water and you want to know which is which DNA. Meta-genomics DNA sequencing is gaining extra momentum these days because we want to understand the microbiota world around us and as a matter of fact the microbiota world inside us.
Today we live in a clean world, modern sanitation, hygiene is good and we live longer as a result of this, of course with considering other beneficial factors of modern human living. However it is suspected by now that super hygiene might cause unexpected problems in our health, for example sudden burst and domination of dangerously pathogenic bacteria and lots of different autoimmune disorders.
Dangerous bacterial hospital strains may become resistant to the best antibiotics and they may become very deadly. Bad Clostridium difficile bacterium might be lurking around your gut but in your healthy, balanced system it is kept under control by normal, good bacteria. After surgery people are treated with antibiotics, to prevent infection, however this might backfire because of harming all bacteria and that could be the opportunity for some smart and strong survival Clostridium difficile individuals taking over the control. And the fatal damage might follow, there might not be any help available at that point. Earlier this year New England Medical Journal reported Els van Nood and colleagues brilliant result of defeating Clostridium difficile by administering fecal microbiota transplant by enema. Microbiota transplantation is not totally new, it has been used sporadically and empirically by limited number of doctors in the last fifty years. Well, before that we did not wash our hands all the time and we were living in peace and harmony with our bacterial cohabitants, shorter life. Modern molecular based science, namely massive DNA sequencing of complex biological systems, in other words meta-genomics opens a new era of modern personalized medicine when we could understand the molecular mechanism behind bacteriotherapy that could be beneficial for conditions like ulcerative colitis, neurological conditions, Parkinson’s disease, obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and all kind of auto immune disorders, and yet we all still can wash our hands and live long in a clean, healthy environment.
Professionally, I am not just a hard working DNA sequencing scientist but also a lucky individual to be involved in many fascinating sequencing projects. This year in our laboratory we started a meta-genomics DNA sequencing project to discover microbial strains in complex biological samples, so I am totally involved in this matter, inside-outside. I am so obsessed with next generation sequencing, this is my profession and passion, so much that I choose to live separately from my wife because of this lovely sequencing machine. Well, as much as I got excited all day long, every day just by thinking about sequencing, that much I was dry and depressed every night, eating, flossing my teeth and watching political circus. That was all.
Personally, I have been conscientiously clean all in my life, you know the type of person who washes hands 15-20 times a day. Unfortunetally, I have several autoimmune conditions, including dark red spots on the light strawberry top. It is not that dangerous, it is not painful, no bumpy, no itchy, no smell, remember we have high hygiene, so I only have embarrassing red dots. This condition has been accompanying me for about ten years, mostly asymptomatic. But in the last two years it came back as my stubborn reminder of my sterile TV bound lifestyle. Well, my recent lovely development in my personal life landed me on the southern hemisphere, back to my hot tropical wife. In the tropics everything grows. It is hot and wet. It is the tropical paradise and this paradise is highly populated with good zoo. All kind of zoo including good microbota zoo. Grown in hidden, hot and wet places. My red spot inflammation could not be treated by private doctor, neither by leading specialists at a world class teaching hospital, they could not help me in the last two years. But now in two weeks I have been cured, no more red spots. What helped me is just a simple microbiota treatment, an ointment, several times a day at the beginning, later to administer it only once a day, every night.
We are not alone, we live in a complex world superimposed into different layer biota’s, macro biota’s and micro biota’s, all forming together Gaia Earth as a super organism. Where the disequilibrium is, there the disease is. So find peace and harmony and your health will follow. Good bacterium beats bad bacterium. And good complex microbiota might treat your autoimmune disease.
I am making my living as a DNA sequencing scientist. Well, I am also an amateur blogger who wants to popularize personal genomics and in order to do that I am exposing some personal, private meta-genomics facts about my life. I am also very shy, I can not talk about the love I feel heating up my heart that I can not explain by the means of genomics. I leave it for the future science of neuro-genomics and I leave it for your imagination.
Tibor Gyuris
Personal Genomics Blogger
2013. October 18
“Knowledge is always good and certainly always better than ignorance.”–Sergey Brin
“Possideo genes ergo sum”—Anonymous Roman Philosopher
….stay tuned for the development of my long term proposal for CR association study, plus I am pondering on some strange behavior of my Theo the Pug….
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