Once considered the cause of most disease, “germs” are now increasingly being recognized as essential to our survival and well-being by extending our genetic capabilities with “supra human” powers.
A groundbreaking study published in the journal Nature titled, “Transfer of carbohydrate-active enzymes from marine bacteria to Japanese gut microbiota,” adds to a growing body of microbiome research challenging the prevailinggenome-centric story of human evolution, namely, that the extremely gradual changes in the protein-coding nucleotide sequences of our DNA are primarily responsible for the survival of our species over the eons.
The 2010 Nature study found that the Japanese have a strain of bacteria in their gut loaded with both the genes and enzymes required to digest the polysaccharides found in sea vegetation, which are normally indigestible. These genes are nowhere found in the human genome and were identified to be from a strain of marine bacteria which naturally live on a type of sea vegetable commonly consumed in the traditional Japanese diet.