Yan et al. demonstrated a 3 week acute effect following alcohol administration in mice that resulted in bacterial overgrowth, as well as an expansion of Bacteroidetes and Verrucomicrobia bacteria while decreasing Firmicutes, with no difference observed after only 1 day or 1 week.For example, daily alcohol consumption for 10 weeks in a rat alters the colonic mucosa-associated bacterial micro-biota fingerprint pattern.Similarly, chronic ethanol feeding for 8 weeks increased fecal pH and decreased abundance of both Bacteriodetes and Firmicutes phyla with a remarkable expansion of Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria phyla in mice.In a human trial, chronic alcohol consumption resulted in the alteration of the mucosa-associated colonic bacterial composition in a subset of alcoholics, with lower median abundances of Bacteroides and higher Proteobacteria. Furthermore, measurement of serum endotoxin suggests a change in microbial function, rather than abundance, which may lead to increased levels of gut-derived pro-inflammatory factors in chronic alcohol consumption. It is noted that the inability to detect clear differences between alcoholics with and without liver disease suggests that chronic alcohol consumption, rather than the disease physiology, is the most important event that appears to alter micro-biota composition.It is now well established that host diet alters the gut micro-biome. Changes in the gut micro-biota composition are also considered an important factor in health and disease.
Dietary assessment has provided us with a window to discover a way to reconfigure the gut micro-biome. In this regard,hydroponic channel the nutritional manipulation of the gut micro-biome serves as a basis for formulating therapeutic approaches that are feasible and acceptable to the general population as a promising way to promote health in the era of personalized nutrition and medicine. Understanding the impact of foods and nutrients on host− microbe coevolution supports the essential role of a mutualistic relationship for intestinal homeostasis, but there remain challenges for nutritionists and scientific investigators alike to determine the “ideal” diet. This review collectively maintains the emerging view that diet supports a specific bacterial community structure and further suggests that a suboptimal dietary composition/quality may promote the development of diseases through introducing intestinal microbial dysbiosis. Major shifts in intestinal microbial composition are often observed when dietary differences between groups are extreme. Only a few population-wide studies are available to date, but some of them support a role of food diversity as a potential mechanism for altering gut microbial diversity. Although it is difficult to determine the causality of observed fecal micro-biota shift with respect to many lifelong changes, generally, an adequate control over influential factors is important for the success of clinical studies to eliminate the drastic effects of unnecessary confounding variables. Many of the studies reviewed here rely on the assumption of equivalence between the term “fecal micro-biome” and “intestinal micro-biome”. Further studies are necessary to elucidate more clearly the exact impact of the selection of different diets on qualitative changes in the gut micro-biota. Some nutrients that have been studied, such as dietary fiber, are a possible option for the maintenance of intestinal homeostasis and improvement of gut health, whereas others may contribute an opposite effect.
Therefore, future research must be focused on looking to improve the effectiveness of diets with an underlying long-term “targeted approach” that allows improvement of intestinal microbial composition and functional activities. In other instances, when dietary differences are small and on a short time scale, gut micro-biota changes are not as obvious, but that is not to say that changes do not occur. An alteration of the gut micro-biota at lower taxonomic levels is still likely to have important functional consequences for the host. Notably, gut micro-biota varies dramatically from individual to individual in lower taxonomic levels. Even small dietary changes may have impacts on the gut micro-biota and altered metabolic activities in the microbial profile that are not easily detected by the phylogenetic/taxonomic methods. Metabolic alterations induced by diet may result in varying the microbial capability of synthesizing substances in the intestinal tract. It appears that measurement of bacterial enzyme activities may be a more sensitive indicator of diet induced changes in the gut micro-biota than taxonomic-based methods. Arguably, absolute microbial population densities are more important than the relative proportion, because these determine the absolute production rates and concentrations of metabolites and signals of microbial origins. Rates of production of fermentation products need to be measured as an index of microbial community function. Further research into the characterization and metabolic activity of the gut micro-biota may provide the key to the influence of the environment on colonic health and disease. Integrating the gut micro-biome data with clinical nutritional assessment, food consumption monitoring, and host phenotyping measurements in future investigations are needed to focus on the identification of metabolic impacts that mediate the effect of diet on gut micro-biota as well as their synergistic effect on host immune function, metabolism, and homeostasis.
Organized by Allison Carruth and Rachel Lee,“The Cultural Politics of Seeds” symposium will look at how gender, ethnicity, and race shape contemporary cultural and political movements related to seeds. Conceived as a forum for integrating research, policy, activism, and art practice, this event will include day-long event with 3 panels and two keynote talks and a related art exhibit at UCLA’s Art/Sci Center featuring Fallen Fruit, the Los Angeles–based art collaborative. By bringing together farmers, artists, academics, and political organizers, the symposium demonstrates that to adequately examine seeds’ diverse functions in culture, taking a multifaceted approach is fundamental. “Moving into a century of 9 billion people and unprecedented pressures on the environment, there is nothing more important than how we will feed ourselves and the sustainability and equity of that enterprise,” says Glen M. MacDonald, Director and Distinguished Professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability about the upcoming event. “Here is a thoughtful and multifaceted exploration of that challenge.” Participants in the symposium come from across the country, including farmers, artists, academics, and political organizers. Several participants take several of these titles. For example, Stephen S. Jones, a professor, collaborates with graduate students to develop wheat for organic and small farms that are underserved by traditional research programs. Elaine Gan, an artist, lecturer, and Ph.D. student studying Film & Digital Media, is working on a multimedia web project that maps different varieties of rice and the ways in which they bring together biocultural entanglements and political economies. Artist-writer-critic Mathias Viegener will give a presentation on “Feral, Wild, Domestic and Social.” The symposium will include an installation by Fallen Fruit at UCLA Art/Sci Center + Lab . The event’s diverse presenters illuminate the inter-connections between individuals’ experiences working with seeds, and broader social and cultural systems. For example, Lucilia Martinez will give a co-presentation about her family’s development of a successful maize farm with ethnoecologist Daniela Solieri. Solieri works collaboratively with scientists and practitioners to analyze small-scale, local food systems,hydroponic dutch buckets identifying key biological and sociocultural processes that may increase their resilience. The symposium will examine the ways in which seeds lead to the creation of social, political and artistic movements that intertwine with issues of gender, ethnicity, and race. It will explore how seeds become entangled with issues such as globalization, global climate change, and developments in genetic engineering and commodity markets. Finally, it will provide a forum for integrating research, policy, activism, and art practice. According to Carruth, “The symposium brings together an exciting group of scholars in the fields of cultural geography, gender studies, comparative literature, anthropology, environmental studies and science, and plant science along with the three co-founders of LA-based Fallen Fruit as well as longtime urban agriculture and food justice activist Tezozomoc. We are fortunate to have had support from across campus to make this interdisciplinary conversation on the cultural politics of seeds possible.” “The Cultural Politics of Seeds” symposium is part of CSW’s multi-year “Life Ltd” research project, which is addressing the question of what impact recent developments inthe biosciences and biotechnology have had on feminist studies. In this year, the group, led by Principal Investigator Rache Lee, is exploring the rich connections between food, ecology, propagation, and metabolism.
Cosponsors of the symposium include University of California Humanities Research Initiative, Institute for Society and Genetics, Division of Life Sciences, Division of Humanities, Division of Social Sciences, Institute of American Cultures, Department of English, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, School of Law, Chicano Studies Research Center, and Charles E. Young Research Library.How do people engage with fruit, and how does fruit engage with us? In what ways does fruit erect or problematize social boundaries? How can fruit bring people together, or tell us about the lives and behaviors of individuals? If fruit is endlessly intertwined with social and cultural politics, how can it become a means of positive change? These are some of the many questions raised by Fallen Fruit, a long-term art collaboration between visual artist David Burns, artist-writer-critic Mathias Viegener, and portrait photographervideo artist Austin Young. Viegener will speak about one of the collaboration’s latest projects at the “Cultural Politics of Seeds” symposium hosted by CSW on May 17. Concurrently, an exhibition by Fallen Fruit will open at UCLA Art/Sci Center + Lab. Fallen Fruit began when the members of the group mapped fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles and it remains one of their core projects. In order to map local fruit, they explore neighborhoods to which they have been invited, creating maps of all the publically available fruit. The maps are hand drawn and distributed free from copyright as jpgs and PDFs. Several of these maps will be on display at Art/Sci. Since first embarking on the fruit mapping project, the collaboration has expanded to include serialized public projects, site-specific installations, and happenings in cities throughout the world. Fallen Fruit’s projects cover all media . Through its happenings and museum exhibitions, the group takes particular interest in working with public space and those who travel through it. At the symposium, Viegener will talk about Fallen Fruit’s pending public art project titled “Feral, Wild, Domestic and Social,” a one quarter-acre watermelon patch in the center of a small town in rural Alabama. During a brief residency in Fall 2012, the group learned that watermelons had once grown on vacant lots throughout the town, partly as the result of people spitting watermelon seeds in the vicinity. Over the years the lots became bare as the result of industrially produced seedless minimelons , sold in supermarkets nationwide. “Mother Patch” will be a public watermelon patch in which visitors will be encouraged to “spit their seeds” as they please, in the hopes that the land’s legacy of natural, community rooted watermelon production may begin again. “This narrative links to the variety of feral stone fruit we’ve found growing in Copenhagen, Northern California and Santa Fe, New Mexico,” says Viegener, in correspondence. “These plants have a symbiotic relationship with us, but a happier one than feral dogs or cats. We’re interested in this kind of peripatetic communal culture that not only links communities but also plants, animals and humans in significant relationships.” In addition to creating public spaces and events built upon the growing and harvesting of natural fruit, Fallen Fruit comments on the broad social implications of these events through the use of mixed media. Fallen Fruit’s 2008 video Double Standard, currently featured on their website, exemplifies how the collaboration melds real time public happenings with various forms of media in order to chart different ways in which fruit functions in society’s social and geographical structures, illuminating issues of sexuality, race, class, and the mediation of “public interaction.” The video juxtaposes unedited footage from two video cameras, documenting one of Fallen Fruit’s Neighborhood Fruit Forages, an event at which people gathered to take a tour of Los Angeles, exploring public places where fruit grows. The videos are overlaid with a text block of comments from a short public television video of the same event that was posted on YouTube. The comments range from insightful to homophobic and racist, creating what the group’s website calls “an alternative, cynical narrative to the events.” The Neighborhood Fruit Forage was an effort to bring peopletogether and consider the roles that fruit plays in public urban space. Double Standard incorporates the event with mixed media in order to challenge participants’ and viewers’ experiences.