An informal report on the isolation and characterization of *Candidatus Astrobacillus crystallinus,* (gen. nov, sp. nov.) a cholesterol-reducing bacterium from the human gut.
Very interesting! Are there any plans to turn this into a probiotic or any live studies to see if the addition of this strain changes the coprostanol composition in waste?
I find it mildly concerning that the ideal feed for this stuff is animal brain matter though. It would be no fun if in return for lowering cholesterol a bit it consumed your brain.
Oh, should probably address the brain-eating-ness as well lol. This is the nice thing about working with strict anaerobes: oxygen is toxic to them, which means your bloodstream is like a river of poison. Same goes for all the rest of your tissues. If they leave the gut, they die.
I haven't gotten my blood work done in a couple of years. I'm set to get some done soon. Hopefully it'll still be open by then? I'd love to participate, and the possibility of trying a new probiotic is exciting!
Congratulations on a promising first test run! I kinda thought it'd take longer, but that's the advantage of already mostly knowing where to look. One far-future ponder: how might star rods interact with GLP-1 agonists...different treatment indications, but there's a lot of comorbidity overlap. It'd suck to end up with a big population of smaller people who then go on to die of heart disease anyway. Cue typical joke about weight only being a lagging indicator of health.
Also, there is no Anti-Memetics Division. But if there were, they'd probably employ the Frontispiece and call it Secretion Processing Centre or something. (Not to be confused with Atzak Protocol.)
Our gut is comprised of more Archaea then bacteria. They can not exist in an oxygen environment. Your mechanism for control of the different types of bacteria are probably related to the interactions of our Archaea.
>Our gut is comprised of more Archaea then bacteria.
Speak for yourself, bub!
The literature I've seen suggests that 40-50% of people have substantial numbers of archaea in the gut, and--when present--they represent an average of about 10% of total microbial cells.
Very interesting! Are there any plans to turn this into a probiotic or any live studies to see if the addition of this strain changes the coprostanol composition in waste?
I find it mildly concerning that the ideal feed for this stuff is animal brain matter though. It would be no fun if in return for lowering cholesterol a bit it consumed your brain.
Oh, should probably address the brain-eating-ness as well lol. This is the nice thing about working with strict anaerobes: oxygen is toxic to them, which means your bloodstream is like a river of poison. Same goes for all the rest of your tissues. If they leave the gut, they die.
So a small animal study has been done with the one other known coprostanol producer, and it seems to work exactly as you'd expect. https://academic.oup.com/lambio/article-abstract/20/3/137/6709127
And yes, I'm turning this into a probiotic. If you want to help alpha test it, send me an email or sign up for the study here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf_BXwlEJaGxtQVtOpTzLMgpCmzLbA171izWx0EfSBBAKnvOw/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=106652386396230577383
I haven't gotten my blood work done in a couple of years. I'm set to get some done soon. Hopefully it'll still be open by then? I'd love to participate, and the possibility of trying a new probiotic is exciting!
Not planning on closing it anytime soon!
I would sign up, but I haven't had my cholesterol levels checked recently, so I'm not sure how useful that would be.
This is fantastic! I am very much looking forward to seeing your work in the future.
Congratulations on a promising first test run! I kinda thought it'd take longer, but that's the advantage of already mostly knowing where to look. One far-future ponder: how might star rods interact with GLP-1 agonists...different treatment indications, but there's a lot of comorbidity overlap. It'd suck to end up with a big population of smaller people who then go on to die of heart disease anyway. Cue typical joke about weight only being a lagging indicator of health.
Also, there is no Anti-Memetics Division. But if there were, they'd probably employ the Frontispiece and call it Secretion Processing Centre or something. (Not to be confused with Atzak Protocol.)
This is amazing, thank you for writing this. I'm not a scientist, but I'm very intrigued.
Our gut is comprised of more Archaea then bacteria. They can not exist in an oxygen environment. Your mechanism for control of the different types of bacteria are probably related to the interactions of our Archaea.
>Our gut is comprised of more Archaea then bacteria.
Speak for yourself, bub!
The literature I've seen suggests that 40-50% of people have substantial numbers of archaea in the gut, and--when present--they represent an average of about 10% of total microbial cells.