Radiation and the Microbiome

I am a somewhat frequent flyer. Once or twice a month I get out of bed in the middle of the night, schlep to the airport bleary eyed, slog through the security line, deposit my goods in bins, take off my shoes and assume the position in the body scan xray machine.  The amount of radiation that I am exposed to is considered minimal - I only fly a couple of times per month.


The scanner shows an awful lot. Privacy concerns have been a hot topic for years, but it didn't come up in class.  I was surprised to see these scanners on the low end of the Radiation Dosage Chart from informationisbeautiful.net - equal to eating a banana. I was also surprised to learn that there is not real standard for communicating the amount and type of radiation that we are exposed to.  How many banana's isn't as crazy as it sounds.

The article "RADs on a plane - The Round Trip" noted that radiation exposure is higher in first class, and as the plane reacher higher altitudes.  It would be interesting to study flight attendants and people who commute every day to see what the health effects are.

The links to Molecular Expressions articles remind me of the lecture I linked to last week.  Dr. Ahern said that the invention of the microscope is at the root of the explosion of understanding in biology and chemistry.  When he was a grad student he was challenged to document a human genome, but declined because it was too hard.  Today we can sequence a human genome in 26 - 50 hours.

They contain lots of interesting tid bits.  Bacteria are the oldest living organisms.  And one bacteria in the large intestine is responsible for manufacturing vitamin K?  Cells were discovered in 1665!  And I didn't realize that an extracellular matrix made of collagen is present only in animals... Collagen. Another buzzword in supplements that I didn't give much thought to.

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/index.html
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/animalcell.html
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/plantcell.html
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/bacteriacell.html

I got stuck on bacteria and wound up reading more about the microbiome.  Here's an entertaining explanation of things, and an interesting TED talk on the subject.

How Bacteria Rule Over Your Body – The Microbiome



Microbiome: Gut Bugs and You | Warren Peters | TEDxLaSierraUniversity

"Can gut bugs change the world? Join Warren Peters on a journey into understanding your microbiome and the new discoveries changing the way we understand diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's disease, autism, and our everyday health and wellness."


I wonder how radiation affects the microbiome...

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