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Comment by will_brown | Hacker News Reader

I posted this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15923695) about the microbiome about 2 months that is related, of course I was down voted into oblivion.

But essentially my point was that human genes are not determinative and work hand in hand with the microbiome, where an analogy I used (though not my original thought) is that the human (genes) are like a piano and the microbiome is like the player.

One of the more interesting studies I have read included identical twins in Africa, where obviously genes are identical, so is environment and diet, yet one twin would be healthy while the other was malnourished. The conclusion was it was the difference in the twins microbiome that was determinative and the cause.

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Will you are a lawyer (quite a good lawyer by my estimate), but you should be careful when moving outside of your sphere of competency. Biology is very, very complex.

Identical twins are not genetically identical (they typically all have small genetic difference), but even if they were the cause for any difference could be due to factors outside of the microbiome. There is no way any careful scientist could conclude from one set of twins what the cause of any difference between them was.

Edit. I apologise for my tone. I am just trying to explain why you got downvoted.

>There is no way any careful scientist could conclude from one set of twins what the cause of any difference between them was.

The twin study wasn’t n=1 it was multiple sets of twins throughout the continent. Either way the twin study wasn’t in my original comment, so it wasn’t the reason for my being downvoted.

My comment regarded the fact that humans have relatively very few genes compared to many other life forms, yet are obviously more complex, that should’nt be controversial or downvoted. But I continued that the microsbiome can explain some of that complexity, for example here is article from Cleveland Clinic regarding a study that concludes the microbiome can change the way genes express themselves, not changes to dna, but the microbiome can turn genes on and off. https://www.google.com/amp/s/health.clevelandclinic.org/2016...

Humans don't have relatively fewer genes compared to other life forms. Humans have less DNA than some species (salamandas are an example), but all animals have around the same number of genes. The extra DNA in some organisms seems to be (mostly) non-functional.

Yes the microbiome influences which genes are expressed.

In the example I was given was wheat vs humans. A quick google search shows wheat has 164,000 to 334,000 genes, compared to 20,000 to 25,000 for humans.

The way it was expressed to me at the time it’s scientifically surprising much simpiler life forms have fewer genes. “This paradox has vexed scientists since the discovery of DNA about 45 years ago,” notes Dmitri Petrov of Harvard Universitys Society of Fellows, when discussing amoeba’s with a genome 200 times the size of a human. See: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2000/02/why-onions-ha...

As you suggest I should probably avoid topics outside my expertise, and genetics certainly is, but I am passionate about health and nutrition, on the edge of those topics the microbiome and genetics come up. Anyway I think was I contribute on these topics deserves a conversation (reply) like you have engaged in and not just downvotes.

> But essentially my point was that human genes are not determinative and work hand in hand with the microbiome

I think what's more generally accepted is that genes work in concert with environment, of which the microbiome plays but one part.

The boundary at which the self ends and the environment begets another philsophical point that Alan Watts spoke at length about, essentially stating there is no dividing line, it's all a spectrum upon which we place arbitrary boundaries because of our need to put things in boxes and that the concept of self that we create of ourselves is a complete fiction.

Also, is the autonomic nervous system or the unconscious and nonconscious considered part of the self?

All good questions, but none of these facts necessarily entail that there is no self, they simply change what we could possibly mean by the "self".

For instance, cars and jobs don't actually exist at the level of particles and fields, and yet we can say with certainty that I have a car that I drive to my job almost every day. These terms have sensible and precise meanings, even if we don't yet know their precise meanings.

I'm not sure, but it might be the use of the phrase "leaky gut". Some people will have a knee-jerk reaction against that term vs. the term "intestinal permeability".

That's a weird reason to downvote. Most people don't know what either of those terms means.

I only became aware of it after seeing the edit war on Wikipedia. It may not be the reason for downvotes but it's apparently a controversial topic among some people.

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