I certainly hope they are going to replicate while knocking out one species of gut biota each time. Would be super helpful right?
Edit: Experiemental design
we establish indvidual colonies of each of the biota detected in our earlier work, we then recombine them in the ratios found in the original work and replicate the previous results.
We then creation combinations lacking a single organism from our mix and look for replication.
Finally we vary the percentages of the biota in our origianal mix and look to see if that affects our ability to replicate.
except our bodies already kinda do that on their own
how would killing species of gut biota would helpful? helpful for whom to accomplish what??
we're headed to a future in which you have to take special pills so that the food doesn't kill you. like the glysophate and GMOs but applied against ALL life, including humans. if this is too far fetched for you then I also hope we don't get there.
> except our bodies already kinda do that on their own
> how would killing species of gut biota would helpful? helpful for whom to accomplish what??
OP wasn't talking about practical uses, he was talking about further experimentation in which the researchers narrow down exactly which gut bacteria has the effect.
insert this.gif :-). One of the things that would be interesting would be to understand if a specific kind of bacteria in the gut was the cause or if it was a ratio of some sort. One could imagine an easy to use diagnostic test[1] that could help inform you if you needed to do something or not.
If this causality pans out (and it would if it was replicated several times) then this would go a long way to helping people figure out if they needed to do something to avoid "early onset Alzheimers" or even Alzheimers in general. An acquaintance had a fecal transplant (yeah it sounds yucky but it isn't really) which consisted of a course of broad spectrum anti-biotics followed by the introduction of a "non-Cdiff gut biome". It "cured" their issue completely and it hasn't returned.
[1] When the Microbiome project was a thing I submitted mine. The fecal test was pretty easy (if 'yucky' from a poopy sort of way).
Helpful to the host so another type can flourish. Certain classes of antibiotics will wipe out species then similar but harmful types will colonize the space and you end up with autoimmune disorders.
Edit: Experiemental design
we establish indvidual colonies of each of the biota detected in our earlier work, we then recombine them in the ratios found in the original work and replicate the previous results.
We then creation combinations lacking a single organism from our mix and look for replication.
Finally we vary the percentages of the biota in our origianal mix and look to see if that affects our ability to replicate.