The Rise of the Zombie Empire: Resistance is Futile

They walk freely among us, unheeded. Infected by brain parasites, behaviours subtly altered. Two billion infected, and counting.
Zombies are popular fictional examples of brain alteration that is usually caused by a biological agent. But inside every fiction is the kernel of truth. Zombies are so popular in part because they are uncomfortably familiar.

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At least two billion people worldwide are infected by the protozoan, many from eating infected meat. Initial symptoms are mild flu, after which the parasite forms cysts that lodge in the brain. There they remain for decades... _NYT

Two recent studies reveal how microbes can alter normal brain functioning. Researchers from California and Singapore detailed how the protozoan Toxoplasma Gondii is capable of blunting normal fear responses to threat in animals. Canadian and Irish researchers have discovered a mind-altering effect from probiotic bacteria -- specifically, a species of lactobacillus. The lactobacillus was found to lower stress, anxiety, and depression related behaviours in mice.

Microbes can change our brains, and make us somehow different. In extreme cases -- as in brain-eating amoeba or fatal encephalitis and meningitis -- they can kill our brains outright. But sometimes they kill or disable only a portion of our brains, and leave us alive, but altered. And sometimes they live inside of us, changing us chemically by their metabolic excreta.

These are not the "borg" of fiction. There are no brain implants or electrodes controlling us. But biology is much stranger than we understand. We can go to Robert Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters," for a vivid fictional account of extraterrestrial invaders able to attach to humans, growing tentacles into human brains and spinal cords. That would be an extreme example of biological control of humans by "the other."

Far more subtle, and easier to bring about, would be genetically controlled microbes able to insert themselves into particular parts of the brain, to bring about neurochemical alterations -- either temporary or permanent. By targeting the brain region of choice, behaviours could be manipulated according to an overall plan or scheme.

Even easier, would be normal body flora genetically altered to secrete brain-altering chemicals, such as benzodiazepine or amphetamine. Something a little extra in your yogurt or your moisturizing cream. Schools, prisons, and armies should take special note.

We are far beyond the skills needed for such simple manipulations. And given the apparent state control of modern popular media and scientific publishing, who would know -- or be able to say anything about it?

Here is how to make your own yogurt. Just in case. Some of us may not be infected yet. There may be safe retreats left, far from the teeming mobs. It may not be too late......Heh.

That Feeling in Your Gut? Intestinal Flora

"As animals ourselves, we have more than 1000 different kinds of microorganisms living in our guts ...._abcnet

Intestinal microbes can determine the quality of your life, and your perception of it. Your guts are the repository of the majority of your microbial complement. Life without "normal flora" would be a different animal.

Professor Petterson and his colleagues bred a number of mice under normal and germ-free conditions. In stantardised tests of activity, the germ-free mice explored more of an "open-field activity box", rearing up on their hind legs more often, and showed less of the signs associated with anxiety.

In studies of the animals' brains, they showed higher levels of a number of hormones, and even differences in the expression of over 170 genes.

The result does not paint a clear picture of whether the development of the germ-free mice is specifically "better" or "worse" for the animals, Professor Pettersson explained, but is a "very, very interesting" first demonstration that the bugs can have such profound effects even within the brain.

It follows a long line of studies that suggest the bugs are far more involved in mammalian function than just in their digestion. _BBC

Very interesting. The germ-free animals lived longer and seemed more curious, but they were very fragile to stress and various types of injury, compared to animals with normal bacterial and skin flora.

If we are to swim in a sea of bacteria -- as it seems we are destined to do -- it is best that our bacterial partners be sympatico with us. If we wish to avoid chronic intestinal inflammation, fatty liver, obesity, and a wide range of other pathologies and malaise, we need to pay attention to our bacterial friends.

Gut inflammation allows the intrusion of large numbers of various protein intruders which are better kept out of the blood and lymph systems. Yes, we can eat more yoghurt, or take probiotic capsules or powders. Not a bad idea, actually. We may even want to begin to gene-engineer our probiotics for maximal benefit against these ailments. In situations of grave extremis, we may be forced into fecal transplants -- as a last resort.

Al Fin clinical and synth-bio microbiologists recommend genetically engineered probiotics out of all the choices mentioned above: from germ-free environments to fecal transplants. But different situations call for different remedies. Consider each case individually.

Researchers looked in detail at the molecular effects of the engineered bacteria and found that the production of regulatory immune cells, rather than of inflammatory immune cells, was enhanced. "When we treat mice with the new strain, we see more accumulation and generation of cells that produce regulatory proteins, which lure and generate regulatory T cells," says Mohamadzadeh. The regulatory T cells, a type of immune cell, counteract the effects of harmful immune cells that attack the cells lining the gut, he says.

...Mohamadzadeh's team is also exploring engineered probiotics as a treatment for colon cancer. In preliminary studies in mice designed to mimic colon cancer, treatment with the modified bacteria reduced the number of polyps the animals developed by 90 percent. "We observed an average of just three small polyps in treated mice, compared to about 35 to 50," he says.

He adds that the bacteria's ability to reduce inflammation isn't limited to the gut; the regulatory cells migrate throughout the body. That means the microbes may also be able to help treat other diseases linked to inflammation, such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis. _TechnologyReview

Of course, once you start introducing targeted gene-engineered microbes into the gut, the possibilities for treatments and specific optimisations multiply rapidly.

You may be aware that peptic ulcers and gastric cancer are tied to a gastric microbe, helicobacter pylori. The development of counter-bacteria to H. Pylori would allow simple, food-assisted treatment for a number of illnesses specific to that microbe.

The same arguments could be applied to skin bacteria and other parts of the body where normal bacterial flora reside. There are plenty of diseases of multiple systems which are caused or made worse by absent or insufficient symbiotic bacteria.

But once we start applying, ingesting, and inserting engineered microbes for treatment and prophylaxis, we are likely to begin thinking about optimisation. Why take nutritional supplements, for example, when microbes can produce the needed substance just as well? The same applies to particular medications, enzymes, or hormones. And so on...

Now go eat your yoghurt.

Eating Germs to Stay Well

Consider this: you come down with productive cough, fever, chills. The chest Xray indicates an infiltrate in your lung fields. Your doctor prescribes antibiotics, and the symptoms subside, you feel better. What do you do next? According to this newsrelease, you should probably eat some germs. Lactobacilli to be specific. Normal gut flora that make vitamins for you and keep the bad bacteria and yeast from setting up shop in your belly. Read on:

Once outside the womb, we are bombarded by microbes and soon we have 10 times more microbes in our body than the number of cells that make up the human body.

It is the bad microbes that cause disease. Good microbes work with the body's immune system to keep the bad microbes at bay by crowding them out. In the symbiotic relationship between good and bad microbes, recent research has uncovered the importance of these good microbes.

“The good microbes - and this is where probiotics come in - keep the bad microbes in small numbers. But they also stimulate the immune system and improve our digestive function. That's the subject of research that has been going on for years,” Huffnagle says.

Probiotics are bacteria that we eat and they're good for our health. They are found in a number of foods that are readily available in the supermarket, and they taste good. You can support probiotic growth by increasing the amount of cultured dairy products you eat, such as cheeses and yogurt, and the foods that encourage probiotics from these dairy products to multiply even further: spices, tea, red wine, berries, apples and beans.

Huffnagle says that most of these good microbes exist within our body in the digestive track, with the largest number occurring in the small and large intestines.

“It's the job of these good microbes to stimulate our immune system, and the other job they do is to stimulate good digestive health,” he says.

Not only that, but the good bacteria are capable of producing antibiotics that attack bad bacteria. Follow along from this newsreport:

Nisin, a peptide, contains 34 amino acid residues and the unusual amino acids lanthionine, methyllanthionine, dehydroalanine and dehydro-amino-butyric acid. The latter are made by post-translational modification of proteins.

Nisin works well against Gram-positive bacteria and food-borne pathogens that cause botulism and listeriosis because it punches holes into cell membranes and binds to essential molecules in the disease-causing bacteria. Hitting on at least two targets reduces the risk of resistance occurring, van der Donk said.

The researchers synthesized nisin simply in a test tube by using a single cyclase enzyme to re-create the process that normally occurs in a strain of the bacterium Lactococcus lactis found naturally in milk. They demonstrated how just one protein (NisC) makes 10 new chemical bonds in a stereochemically defined fashion. Specifically, they showed that NisC is responsible for the formation of five characteristic thioether rings required for nisin's biological activity.

"Despite all the progress in synthetic chemistry, we cannot come close to making a compound like nisin efficiently," van der Donk said. "Synthetic chemists in the past needed 67 steps to make it, while nature uses just two enzymes. One of these is the cyclase whose activity we have demonstrated in this paper."

Read more here.

When you are born, your gastrointestinal tract is sterile. As soon as you began eating, your gut was colonised by bacteria. If you were breast-fed, you were lucky enough to receive booster nutrients that promoted bifidobacteria, which prevent colonisation by pathogenic bacteria. Other food sources, although nutritious enough, lack that advantage.

Gut bacteria produce vitamins B12 and K for us, as well as keeping out the bad germs. Genetically engineered gut bacteria could do much more for us, and would be a natural way of introducing genetically engineered resveratrol, curcumin, or capsaicin or other natural substances known to counter cancer or promote longevity.

Most of us do not like to think about what goes on inside of us, until we get sick, then we definitely want a physician to think very hard about what is inside of us and how to make it better. But would it not be better to stay well, if you had the choice?