The way they phrased it in the article, the bacteria that "took over" after decimation were also beneficial varieties. They're just pointing out that these new varieties encoded different sets of proteins. They're not sure what signals are lost from the chemical soup of our digestive tract because of these changes.
They didn't specifically mention it, but their scenario sort of begs these two questions:
What if humans used to inherit from their parents (sharing partially eaten food) the gut bacteria varieties that were best suited to keeping their family lineage healthy?
What if we've now lost that special "priming" of our digestive tracts because of widespread use of antibiotics?
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Date: 2010-Sep-15, Wednesday 02:45 am (UTC)They didn't specifically mention it, but their scenario sort of begs these two questions:
What if humans used to inherit from their parents (sharing partially eaten food) the gut bacteria varieties that were best suited to keeping their family lineage healthy?
What if we've now lost that special "priming" of our digestive tracts because of widespread use of antibiotics?