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I know nothing about this, so I guess I'm asking "why can't we do this?": take some brain, throw it in a blender, and look for DNA the same way the ancient envi

by flir 2y ago

I know nothing about this, so I guess I'm asking "why can't we do this?": take some brain, throw it in a blender, and look for DNA the same way the ancient environmental DNA people do?

j6m8 2y ago
Very hard to clean a blender! More nitpickfully, one of the big things we care about is if the bacteria are living _harmlessly_ in the brain. i.e., site of microbes, and a lack of inflammation, will answer more than just "are there microbes around".
dhosek 2y ago
You’d have to get that brain cleanly from the creature to the blender.
- flir 2y ago
  Place body in sterile isolator, expose dura mater, DNase treatment of the area, insert sterile syringe into brain? Repeat experiment several times, and also process negative controls. Not my area. I guess the fact that it hasn't been done proves it's way harder than I'm assuming it is.
bagels 2y ago
You can't find out this way. Removing brains exposes it to an outside environment where there are microbes. You can't tell if they arrived before or after you removed the material. Related recent story about earth microbes colonizing what was hoped to be a pristine sample of astroid captured in space: https://www.space.com/ryugu-asteroid-sample-earth-life-colonization https://www.space.com/ryugu-asteroid-sample-earth-life-colon...
- flawn 2y ago
  Maybe the first point you make is also the argument for why our brain might have a microbiome, as our body is not in any way hermetically enclosed, and e.g. amoebas are able to infect our brains just by going through our nose.
codethief 2y ago
From what I understand Joe DeRisi's approach[0] comes relatively close to your "blender" idea! [0]: I already mentioned Adam Savage's excellent podcast with him elsewhere in this dicussion but here's a direct link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MzzD2F73iGU&t=2s&pp=2AECkAIB https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MzzD2F73iGU&t=2s&pp=2AECkAIB

by flir 2y ago

I know nothing about this, so I guess I'm asking "why can't we do this?": take some brain, throw it in a blender, and look for DNA the same way the ancient environmental DNA people do?

j6m8 2y ago

Very hard to clean a blender! More nitpickfully, one of the big things we care about is if the bacteria are living _harmlessly_ in the brain. i.e., site of microbes, and a lack of inflammation, will answer more than just "are there microbes around".

dhosek 2y ago

You’d have to get that brain cleanly from the creature to the blender.

flir 2y ago
Place body in sterile isolator, expose dura mater, DNase treatment of the area, insert sterile syringe into brain? Repeat experiment several times, and also process negative controls. Not my area. I guess the fact that it hasn't been done proves it's way harder than I'm assuming it is.

bagels 2y ago

You can't find out this way. Removing brains exposes it to an outside environment where there are microbes. You can't tell if they arrived before or after you removed the material. Related recent story about earth microbes colonizing what was hoped to be a pristine sample of astroid captured in space: https://www.space.com/ryugu-asteroid-sample-earth-life-colonization https://www.space.com/ryugu-asteroid-sample-earth-life-colon...

flawn 2y ago
Maybe the first point you make is also the argument for why our brain might have a microbiome, as our body is not in any way hermetically enclosed, and e.g. amoebas are able to infect our brains just by going through our nose.

codethief 2y ago

From what I understand Joe DeRisi's approach[0] comes relatively close to your "blender" idea! [0]: I already mentioned Adam Savage's excellent podcast with him elsewhere in this dicussion but here's a direct link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MzzD2F73iGU&t=2s&pp=2AECkAIB https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MzzD2F73iGU&t=2s&pp=2AECkAIB