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The same promise was held out for Ulcerative Colitis / Crohns. Composition of the gut biome clearly plays a role in both illnesses. But the search for small mol

The same promise was held out for Ulcerative Colitis / Crohns. Composition of the gut biome clearly plays a role in both illnesses. But the search for small molecule drugs building on this observation seems to have been fruitless. That might be because it's not the presence of a particular molecule in bacterial poop that's influencing the disease but something about the biome as a whole. More positively, it might also be that the tools available at the start of that search were nothing like as good as those we have now as interest in the brain / biome link grows. I tend to think it unlikely that small molecules for effective treatment of anything much will result from this but I've no doubt a great deal of useful and important things will be learned in the process. I'd love to be wrong.

sdedovic 4y ago
> the search for small molecule drugs building on this observation seems to have been fruitless I imagine this is such a perfect use case for large-scale data analytics. Maybe with the next (or n+2 or n+10) generation of wearables we may be able to track some of the macro effects of diet, exercise, air quality, sleep, etc. at such a big scale that we can determine how individual factors can affect mood and behaviour. Ignoring the privacy and political concerns aside, it seems like such a cool problem space.
- doingtheiroming 4y ago
  One of the challenges faced in the early days was simply to get the bacteria to reproduce. It’s not clear for any given bacteria what substrate and food source is useful. Not being able to do that was an obstacle to the analytics since much of the basic data couldn’t be developed. It seems we are better at that now.
xyzzy21 4y ago
It could indeed be the interaction of two (2) complex, mutually interacting feedback loops. Definitely not a simple reductive result. But well within that complexity theory can address.

sdedovic 4y ago

> the search for small molecule drugs building on this observation seems to have been fruitless I imagine this is such a perfect use case for large-scale data analytics. Maybe with the next (or n+2 or n+10) generation of wearables we may be able to track some of the macro effects of diet, exercise, air quality, sleep, etc. at such a big scale that we can determine how individual factors can affect mood and behaviour. Ignoring the privacy and political concerns aside, it seems like such a cool problem space.

doingtheiroming 4y ago
One of the challenges faced in the early days was simply to get the bacteria to reproduce. It’s not clear for any given bacteria what substrate and food source is useful. Not being able to do that was an obstacle to the analytics since much of the basic data couldn’t be developed. It seems we are better at that now.

xyzzy21 4y ago

It could indeed be the interaction of two (2) complex, mutually interacting feedback loops. Definitely not a simple reductive result. But well within that complexity theory can address.