Microbial strain gives Japanese Sushi-eating advantage

Japanese consume large amounts of raw fish and seaweed, in the form of sushi and nori. It is healthy for them partly due to a partnership with a seafaring bacteria friend found in their gut. Japanese gut bacteria aren’t just limited to the genes that they inherit from their ancestors. Bacteria native to the natural world can be introduced to our gut. Once ingested, individual bacteria can swap genes quite easily, both internal gut bacteria and externally introduced bacteria. This ‘horizontal gene transfer’ means that bacteria have an entire kingdom of genes, ripe for exchange. In the world’s oceans – a marine bacterium called Zobellia galactanivorans was introduced to the Japanese gut through consuming seaweed.

Zobellia is a seaweed-eater. It lives on, and digests, several species including those used to make nori. Nori, or seaweed, is commonly used in Japanese meals, in miso soup, sushi wrapping, for example. When you consume these algae with sushi and miso, marine bacteria is also consumed, and Zobellia is consumed. Zobellia mingles with our existing gut microbiota, "including those that allow them to break down the carbohydrates of their marine meals", according to research by the University of Victoria. The gut bacteria suddenly gained the ability to exploit an extra source of energy and those that retained their genetic loans prospered. This process is known as horizontal gene transfer. Six strains of of the human gut Bacteroides plebeius had been discovered that possess an unique gene from the aforementioned porphyran-breaking enzyme, all of them coming from the bowels of Japanese people.

See article for more information, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2010/04/07/gut-bacteria-in-japanese-people-borrowed-sushi-digesting-genes-from-ocean-bacteria/

* indicates required fields

Comments must be approved before they are displayed

*Name:

*Comment:

🙂 Using emojis in your blog:
• Keyboard shortcuts: For Mac, press [Ctrl + Cmd + Space]; for Windows, press [ Windows Key + . ]
• Copy and paste: Find a list of emojis and paste them into the text field.

Display Image:

Image Position:

none
center
left
right

Display Avatar: If checked, your avatar will be displayed

*Password:

*Captcha:

S	M	T	W	Th	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Herbsprout.com

freespace

Microbial strain gives Japanese Sushi-eating advantage

introduction

bloguru friends

calendar

latest comments

hashtags

history