Everyone poops, even in science.
Cities are pretty great inventions. They're places where we can conveniently find a new type of burrito every day for a month, avoid eye contact on the bus while staring intently at our phones, and have important conversation in corner cafes (I hope everyone here knows I'm working on my new screenplay!). What then does it take for a city to exist? A modern city certainly needs tons of robust materials such as concrete, along with pipes and wires to keep everything from natural gas to cell signals work. However humans have been try their hand at the urban game for roughly six millenia, long before most of what we would consider key infrastructure.
What cities need, now and forever, is large-scale food production. That was true for Angor Wat and Chichen Itza, and remains so for London and Mumbai. You can't hunt and gather your way to Manhattan, and a modern city is just as reliant upon the collective stomachs of its inhabitants as any of its ancient counterparts.
The most recent projections of human population growth put global population at near 10 billion by mid-century. While the total population of Earth is not expected to grow beyond this point there is the expectation of an increase in the demand for food beyond basic grains and towards foods, such as meat, which provide a much higher density of protein and fat. While it appears that we will avoid any sort of runaway population growth then we should expect agricultural demand to grow throughout this century long after any peak in human population.
Where then to get this food? Close to half of the planet's land is currently dedicated, in one way or another, to the production of food for human beings. While more intensive cultivation techniques, whether through changes in soil management and genetic modification, are likely to be implemented over the coming century there is a growing effort to expand our collective efforts and cultivate the sea.
Now aquaculture is not new. Humans have practiced various forms of it for centuries. What is new is, through a combination of the decimation of wild stocks and the expansion of cultivation in marine systems, that we have hit parity between cultured and caught seafood. Just as we couldn't hunt or gather our way to Manhattan on land we won't be able to on the sea either. The growing demand for protein, and in particular seafood, necessitates an improvement in our practices for cultivating the sea.
One such crop is the oyster. In the case of my work it is the Pacific oyster, the most cultivated species of the oyster family. Oysters lend themselves well to aquaculture. They are sedentary, naturally grow in dense agglomerations, and will feed themselves by continually filtering seawater. While that last part comes in handy it does mean that oyster nutrition is entirely dependent on whatever microorganisms happen to be floating by in their local patch of ocean. This does not mean the oyster is alone in its noble battle to survive off of whatever it strains from the sea, for the gut of the oyster turns out to be its own little niche for various microorganisms to thrive. This community, known as the gut microbiome, lives in the intestinal track of every oyster and is most likely a significant factor in how well it can digest food.
I say most likely a significant factor because, while the gut microbiome of some species such as humans have been studied in great detail over the past few years, that of the Pacific oyster has only just begun to be studied. My interest in all of this is to get a better look at what lives in oyster guts because the ability to digest food is directly tied to the ability to incorporate plankton into more delicious oyster meat for humans. To start to tackle my goal of finding if there are certain bacteria, or combinations of bacteria, which can improve oyster growth rates I'm starting with three questions. One, does the diet of an oyster shape the composition of the gut microbiome, that is the relative abundance of all the different bacterial types in there? Two, will two closely related oysters also have gut microbiomes more similar than if they were unrelated? Three, is the growth rate of an oyster predictably influenced by its gut microbiome?
This spring I'm starting with the first question. If the gut microbiome has any significant connection to digestion then it can be reasoned that different diets will cause different gut microbiomes in the same oyster. This means I've got the glamorous task feeding multiple oysters, in this case fifteen, a controlled diet in individual tanks and then collecting their poop on a weekly basis. The oysters are all in their individual tanks in order to prevent any microbial cross-contamination in the study.
Wait, come back, this is important.
Why look at poop? Well, just as everyone has a gut microbiome everyone also poops. It also turns out that collecting feces is a pretty standard method, as far as these endeavors go, of getting a snapshot of the gut microbiome that day. In collecting oyster poop I can then, with the help of a particular type of genetic sequencing, get a census of all of the types of microorganisms living in the intestinal track on a regular basis. Every month then the diet changes for ten of the oysters while leaving five as a control. If the diet really has an effect of the gut microbiome the end result should be a stable gut microbiome for the five control oysters and a changing one for the ten experimental ones.
It turns out that you may one day, by taking a good look at oyster poop, that you may get more oysters for you buck.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, the ones you do eat have been eating at restaurants have been depurated. This is a fancy word to work into your next conversation meaning 'pooped empty'.
What cities need, now and forever, is large-scale food production. That was true for Angor Wat and Chichen Itza, and remains so for London and Mumbai. You can't hunt and gather your way to Manhattan, and a modern city is just as reliant upon the collective stomachs of its inhabitants as any of its ancient counterparts.
The most recent projections of human population growth put global population at near 10 billion by mid-century. While the total population of Earth is not expected to grow beyond this point there is the expectation of an increase in the demand for food beyond basic grains and towards foods, such as meat, which provide a much higher density of protein and fat. While it appears that we will avoid any sort of runaway population growth then we should expect agricultural demand to grow throughout this century long after any peak in human population.
Where then to get this food? Close to half of the planet's land is currently dedicated, in one way or another, to the production of food for human beings. While more intensive cultivation techniques, whether through changes in soil management and genetic modification, are likely to be implemented over the coming century there is a growing effort to expand our collective efforts and cultivate the sea.
Now aquaculture is not new. Humans have practiced various forms of it for centuries. What is new is, through a combination of the decimation of wild stocks and the expansion of cultivation in marine systems, that we have hit parity between cultured and caught seafood. Just as we couldn't hunt or gather our way to Manhattan on land we won't be able to on the sea either. The growing demand for protein, and in particular seafood, necessitates an improvement in our practices for cultivating the sea.
One such crop is the oyster. In the case of my work it is the Pacific oyster, the most cultivated species of the oyster family. Oysters lend themselves well to aquaculture. They are sedentary, naturally grow in dense agglomerations, and will feed themselves by continually filtering seawater. While that last part comes in handy it does mean that oyster nutrition is entirely dependent on whatever microorganisms happen to be floating by in their local patch of ocean. This does not mean the oyster is alone in its noble battle to survive off of whatever it strains from the sea, for the gut of the oyster turns out to be its own little niche for various microorganisms to thrive. This community, known as the gut microbiome, lives in the intestinal track of every oyster and is most likely a significant factor in how well it can digest food.
I say most likely a significant factor because, while the gut microbiome of some species such as humans have been studied in great detail over the past few years, that of the Pacific oyster has only just begun to be studied. My interest in all of this is to get a better look at what lives in oyster guts because the ability to digest food is directly tied to the ability to incorporate plankton into more delicious oyster meat for humans. To start to tackle my goal of finding if there are certain bacteria, or combinations of bacteria, which can improve oyster growth rates I'm starting with three questions. One, does the diet of an oyster shape the composition of the gut microbiome, that is the relative abundance of all the different bacterial types in there? Two, will two closely related oysters also have gut microbiomes more similar than if they were unrelated? Three, is the growth rate of an oyster predictably influenced by its gut microbiome?
This spring I'm starting with the first question. If the gut microbiome has any significant connection to digestion then it can be reasoned that different diets will cause different gut microbiomes in the same oyster. This means I've got the glamorous task feeding multiple oysters, in this case fifteen, a controlled diet in individual tanks and then collecting their poop on a weekly basis. The oysters are all in their individual tanks in order to prevent any microbial cross-contamination in the study.
Wait, come back, this is important.
Why look at poop? Well, just as everyone has a gut microbiome everyone also poops. It also turns out that collecting feces is a pretty standard method, as far as these endeavors go, of getting a snapshot of the gut microbiome that day. In collecting oyster poop I can then, with the help of a particular type of genetic sequencing, get a census of all of the types of microorganisms living in the intestinal track on a regular basis. Every month then the diet changes for ten of the oysters while leaving five as a control. If the diet really has an effect of the gut microbiome the end result should be a stable gut microbiome for the five control oysters and a changing one for the ten experimental ones.
It turns out that you may one day, by taking a good look at oyster poop, that you may get more oysters for you buck.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, the ones you do eat have been eating at restaurants have been depurated. This is a fancy word to work into your next conversation meaning 'pooped empty'.
Comments
Post a Comment