The oyster gut microbiome and you.

Science is about humanity's search for the answers to fundamental questions ranging from 'Why is the speed of light the same for all observers' to 'Can I eat that?'. Two years into my graduate school career I now feel secure in knowing that I helped to contribute my little part to our collective understanding of things eating other things, as well as why you should not think too hard when eating oysters. My part of all this is a just-published paper with the snappy title "High turnover of faecal microbiome from algal feedstock experimental manipulations in the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas)".  If you don't feel like reading the whole thing here's the tldr;

1. If you change the diet of an oyster its gut microbiome will change quickly, on the time scale of a week or so.
2. Different oysters will respond to changes in diet in very similar ways, at least with what is in their gut microbiome.
3. This is of relevance as it implies that if any probiotics are developed for improving oyster crops in aquaculture then they can be quickly an uniformly incorporated into multiple oyster gut microbiomes.

Actually, I would recommend cooking oysters.
[Original published here on May 11th 2018]