This is one of the things that’s deeply challenging for biology and biochemistry - it’s extremely resistant to the sort of reductionism that works so well for other fields. It’s rare to find a single compound, a single species, or a single pathway that’s responsible enough for an effect to show up in studies of the sort of power that one can muster without a ton of time and money, and as soon as you try to capture synergistic effects, you hit a combinatorial wall quickly. In microbiology, for instance, colonies of different bacterial species are the norm, not the exception, and metabolic pathways that span multiple species are common to the point that trying to isolate a given species’ contribution can miss the effect entirely.
> metabolic pathways that span multiple species are common to the point that trying to isolate a given species’ contribution can miss the effect entirely.
I think author is saying that you ingest compound A, microbe 1 eats A and secretes B, microbe 2 eats B and releases C. C happens to do <positive thing>. You could imagine parallel pathways where maybe microbe 2 only works if it is in the presence of microbe 3.
Meaning everything is a mess to try and disentangle.
So, a metabolic pathway is the set of steps by which an organism converts one molecule into another - this can be by splitting a molecule into pieces, by adding or removing an atom or small group of atoms, or by combining two different molecules into a larger or more complex one. By way of a very, very simple pathway, your body breaks down ethanol (alcohol, C2H5OH) by first removing a hydrogen (and causing the oxygen to double-bond to the carbon) to create Acetaldehyde, CH3CH=O, and then oxidizing that by swapping the H remaining on the second carbon for an OH to create Acetic Acid, the primary component in vinegar. So, when we say your body metabolizes ethanol into acetic acid, we're talking about a two step metabolic pathway.
Bacteria can stash intermediate pathway results outside of their cell wall for various reasons (sometimes the chemical environment is more amenable outside the cell than inside, sometimes buildup of the intermediates can disrupt other processes, sometimes that's just how it happens - biology is weird), and very often what you'll see is that a multi-step metabolic pathway can span across multiple different organisms - so, species 1 takes up a starting material, performs a handful of modifications, and then excrete the results outside the cell wall, and then another species will take up that substance and perform additional modifications on it, and this can run through several species before reaching the terminal state in the pathway (including the first species again). This works because each bacteria can have different enzymes and different internal chemistry which can affect how easy or likely a reaction is.
Nitrogen fixing is a notable example of this - it's not just one species in the roots of legumes responsible for taking N2 and converting it into ammonia, there's 6 or 7 that take part in that pathway.
There's tons of folk remedies that do absolutely nothing useful at all, too. When you don't have any reliable medicine, you take whatever you have on hand and hope for a placebo effect. Eventually, you find something helpful because even a broken clock is right twice a day.
There are recorded beliefs in medieval Germany, for instance, that carrying or wearing an eye from a bat will make you invisible.
I think the closest one ("but no cigar") might be oscillococcinum, but its popularity isn't due to doctors recommending it (because they don't, by and large).
The article title is super misleading - this is about measurements of inflammatory markers in vitro and explicitly does not generalize to food intake.
It is also missing the "in Mice" part of the headline.
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/18/3/376
Functional Phytochemicals Cooperatively Suppress Inflammation in RAW264.7 Cells
RAW 264.7 cells are a mouse macrophage cell line commonly used in research to study immune responses, inflammation, and cancer.
In mice, but not even real mice. That's a new one!
This is one of the things that’s deeply challenging for biology and biochemistry - it’s extremely resistant to the sort of reductionism that works so well for other fields. It’s rare to find a single compound, a single species, or a single pathway that’s responsible enough for an effect to show up in studies of the sort of power that one can muster without a ton of time and money, and as soon as you try to capture synergistic effects, you hit a combinatorial wall quickly. In microbiology, for instance, colonies of different bacterial species are the norm, not the exception, and metabolic pathways that span multiple species are common to the point that trying to isolate a given species’ contribution can miss the effect entirely.
> metabolic pathways that span multiple species are common to the point that trying to isolate a given species’ contribution can miss the effect entirely.
What does this mean?
I think author is saying that you ingest compound A, microbe 1 eats A and secretes B, microbe 2 eats B and releases C. C happens to do <positive thing>. You could imagine parallel pathways where maybe microbe 2 only works if it is in the presence of microbe 3.
Meaning everything is a mess to try and disentangle.
So, a metabolic pathway is the set of steps by which an organism converts one molecule into another - this can be by splitting a molecule into pieces, by adding or removing an atom or small group of atoms, or by combining two different molecules into a larger or more complex one. By way of a very, very simple pathway, your body breaks down ethanol (alcohol, C2H5OH) by first removing a hydrogen (and causing the oxygen to double-bond to the carbon) to create Acetaldehyde, CH3CH=O, and then oxidizing that by swapping the H remaining on the second carbon for an OH to create Acetic Acid, the primary component in vinegar. So, when we say your body metabolizes ethanol into acetic acid, we're talking about a two step metabolic pathway.
Bacteria can stash intermediate pathway results outside of their cell wall for various reasons (sometimes the chemical environment is more amenable outside the cell than inside, sometimes buildup of the intermediates can disrupt other processes, sometimes that's just how it happens - biology is weird), and very often what you'll see is that a multi-step metabolic pathway can span across multiple different organisms - so, species 1 takes up a starting material, performs a handful of modifications, and then excrete the results outside the cell wall, and then another species will take up that substance and perform additional modifications on it, and this can run through several species before reaching the terminal state in the pathway (including the first species again). This works because each bacteria can have different enzymes and different internal chemistry which can affect how easy or likely a reaction is.
Nitrogen fixing is a notable example of this - it's not just one species in the roots of legumes responsible for taking N2 and converting it into ammonia, there's 6 or 7 that take part in that pathway.
Hopefully AI can help us parse some of these massive data sets and interactions.
So ... mint chutney, anyone?
My man. Why stop at chutney, when you can go all the way to Briyani (the south indian kind)
chase it with a shot of espresso for 1000x increase
Can I take a capsaicin and a mint supplement together? Is that enough to get the effect?
You'd still get a certain effect when it comes out.
No, the article title is misleading. This is in-vitro research only.
It is funny how that is the thing people turn to rather than just eating food. Let me eat junk and be happy while taking supplements.
What part of their post indicates they eat junk? Maybe they just don't want to have spicy minty meals every day
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There's tons of folk remedies that do absolutely nothing useful at all, too. When you don't have any reliable medicine, you take whatever you have on hand and hope for a placebo effect. Eventually, you find something helpful because even a broken clock is right twice a day.
There are recorded beliefs in medieval Germany, for instance, that carrying or wearing an eye from a bat will make you invisible.
Folk medicine and remedies are one thing; traditional and herbal medicine certainly has its place and is understudied.
Homeopathy however is pure nonsense even on a fundamental scientific level.
It is unfortunate that the two get conflated.
What’s the physical basis for that?
Homeopathy is not a "folk" tradition, it is simply an insane concept.
I once sat next to a mint plant and it cured my cold, the farther I sat the better I felt. Obviously diluted mint particles in the air cured me.
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and yet it moves :^)
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Can you give an example of a well-known homeopathic and/or folk remedy that has been adopted into regular medicine, maybe in the last 20-50 years?
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I think the closest one ("but no cigar") might be oscillococcinum, but its popularity isn't due to doctors recommending it (because they don't, by and large).
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Obligatory Mitchell and Webb https://youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0
That particular combination reminds me of https://www.tumblr.com/nudibranchparty/188803422027/fun-fact...