

Our Microbiome May Be Looking Out for Itself - dnetesn
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/science/our-microbiome-may-be-looking-out-for-itself.html?ref=science&_r=0

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bkurtz13
This reminded me of a discussion of the "Red Queen Hypothesis"[0] in the book
Daemon by Daniel Suarez[1].

It's alternately interesting and disturbing... the implication that much of
our social behavior is to further the aims of microscopic puppet masters.

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis)
[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(book_series)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_\(book_series\))

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blacksmith_tb
This implies quite a lot of coordination. I participated in americangut.org
and my guts contained 45 species of bacteria in measurable numbers (just one
sample). Good tests for fungi are getting closer, but I don't have a hard
number here, but I would assume at least a handful of species. And we have
recently heard about bacteriophages interacting with bacteria in our
microbiome as well. Unless all of these organisms developed similar mechanisms
for manipulating us to similar ends, I would expect a microbial rugby match,
not a puppet master.

