This Week in Microbiology
366: Our Vanishing Ancient Gut Microbes
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Show notes
TWiM explains a bacterial antiviral defense system that uses a noncoding RNA template to build tandem-repeat DNA through a mechanism that parallels how eukaryotic telomerase extends telomeres, and genome sequencing of the Tsimane of Bolivia and the Hadza of Tanzania which reveals over a thousand gut bacterial species shared between the two populations, many now vanishing from industrialized humans, suggesting they co-migrated with our ancestors out of Africa and into the Americas.
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Links for this episode:
Antiviral immunity via telomerase-like reverse transcription in bacteria (Nature)
Prehistoric global migration of vanishing gut microbes with humans (Nature)
Music used on TWiM is composed and performed by Ronald Jenkees and used with permission.
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