MICROBIOME-A COMMUNICATION BATTLEFRONT

This discussion delves into areas different from my usual posts.  It touches on concerns that dovetail into the remarkable current science about the world of microbes, microbiome, and the evolving super AI technology that exists now.  AI offers great hope and excitement, as well as its impact in bringing-forth concerns to society and the scientific community, including  AI experts. I tie this together in the form of a fictional supposition with a possible disturbing plausible probability but is very narrow and limited to a  specific biological example, not the vast AI phenomenon and movement in all its evolving remarkable applications.

 

Friends:

 

Though QS ( Quorum Sensing) has a sci-fi element about it, it has been known for some time since discovering the difference between gram-negative vs. gram-positive bacteria, as discussed in my previous Dr. Koz post about “biofilms.”

 

It has captured my concerns and fascination, for there is more to the growing story than meets the eye.

 

Relevantly, our gut, with its trillions of extremely metabolically active health and disease-engendering bacteria in the microbiome, is sometimes referred to as our “second brain,” but how it works is very different in its amazing diversification and design.

The Atlantic 2018

“When bacteria talk, Bonnie Bassler listens. She just never figured that viruses were listening, too.

Since the 1990s, Princeton University biologist has been studying a phenomenon called quorum sensing, in which bacteria ( also yeasts. viruses) release molecules that indicate how many of their peers are around. Through these messages, they can coordinate their behavior and launch certain actions—such as infectious attacks—only when their numbers are large enough. Bassler’s student Justin Silpe also discovered that a virus can listen in on these signals for ( possible) sinister ends ” 

Continuing, ” Bacteria ( and virus) Send Electrical Pulses as Recruitment Ads”—To coordinate their behavior, the microorganisms can transmit signals much like neurons. Bacteria and viruses can “talk to each other,” which lets them coordinate.

Significantly, the normal microbiome, as mentioned in my former earlier article,  is a  constant, competitive battlefield –extremely complex and interfaces with microbiological sensor feedback loops that read and respond to our own body’s cellular, immune, physiological, and microbial status as data of what to do next. 

Think of it as massive interfacing, societies engaged with competing ideologies vying to gain control by constantly trying to impose their will and domination. 

However, when healthy, your microbiome, which is used to this, and likely needs this dynamic challenge in some ways,  brings in a whole new meaning of being healthy by trying to keep the balance and stability of the constant warring factions in check–and there are indeed many interacting levels going on at once!

 

As we are now discovering, there is a real form of intelligence, transcending what we understand as cognitive intelligence. 

 

It is complex and alien to our present understanding of “being smart” that it brings us to the threshold of seeking answers from hard science to spiritual.  

 

How this extensive, omnipotent mini-world communicates does so with ironically the same initials, AI, but not man-made technological AI (Artificial Intelligence), but one far older,  already molecular-sized, and more complex in the world of biology, called Auto Inducers (AI) that initiate Nature’s programs in stunning ways we do not yet understand but just learning with awe, intense study, and legitimate concerns.

 

Playfully, with so much action and back-and-forth battling, one clever at creating combat video games; could find an amazing and instructive hit with this concept!

 

But now, with the trending concerns about very advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI elevated to AGI)  evolving so fast without many established barriers or guardrails to date, could there be a theoretical scenario of   “piggy-backing” Man’s advanced AI technology onto existing microbial intelligence in QS?  

 

Depending on the handlers, there are possibilities for remarkable good and a chilling dark side.

 

As an additional underlying element, the dark side of AI development in all its forms and applications is that it is vulnerable to man’s undeniable penchant and weakness for control, power, and greed that can morph into nefarious politics and far worse! 

 

Based on recent history and behavior, could this be likely? 

 

Well, consider something so terrifying and deadly at this time, filled with powerful political interests, money, and cartels, as us handling fentanyl now slipped into our drugs, snacks, and foods, and people are dying as a consequence as never before.

 

Consider the recent arguments of “gain of function” of viral research–obscured, complicated, and imbued with special interests, misinformation, government authoritarian mandates, and massive “follow the money” flow incentives that those who would have control in biological AI on top of this would dwarf all present concerns about “gain of function” being our maximum worry.

 

The “center of the ball” of action largely depends on us facing some hard questions…Do you trust your government, international governments, our agencies, or the media? 

 

Do you trust all the nice-sounding branding and organizations, many in the non-profit sector,  aimed at making us think their policies are created for our best interests and welfare?

 

If indifferent, non-probing, passively dutiful, or unaware, we may sadly remain vulnerable, perhaps even to our peril.

 

So continuing the “what if” scenario and using the gut as an exemplary biological entry point makes a lot of sense.

 

Consider a fictional picture of pre-programmed gut bacteria that could be introduced and go undetected until activated.

 

It could easily be embedded into some of the trillions of bacteria, viruses, and yeasts already competing within us at every moment with the semblance of normality.

Still, the thought of weaponizing imported and embedded peaceful bacteria or viruses,  completely programmed to bypass our immune system, let’s say through food or dietary supplements, to become activated lethal and infectious  “Manchurian Candidates” is on the table of one of many awful intentional and capable possibilities.

In comparison, it would make the “gain of function” issue absolute child’s play– then again, perhaps things become more specifically programmed and precise to hit and affect certain populations or specific chromosomal characteristics of biology or traits!

QS has worked in our bodies and all life forms as a natural and complex process for billions of years between macro vs. microorganisms–it’s a smart, resilient,  proven, and adaptable system of most all life forms.

 

It is programmed by Nature for all substances in our environment, our soils, and our food chain through the manufacture of their customized “biofilms”–again, in my last lecture, it is part of a normal and essential process that is done by our friendly and not friendly microbes.

 

Virulence, adaptation, and intelligence operations are primarily generated within the protected and insulated biofilm headquarters before bioactive molecules, healthy ones, or toxins are released and spread.

 

The point to make, this is possible– an exponential, man-made, technological, boot-strapping enhancement with replicating nano-sized machines that may even be programmed to get around the need for biofilms or create super bullet-proof biofilms beyond anything presently found in nature! 

 

Like harnessing Nature’s intrinsic principles of physics of the atom,  for good or for harm, there since the beginning of time, for the first atomic bomb, 99% of all the hard and incredibly complex elements of physics are already done and are in place by nature with billions of years of precedence behind it. 

 

Creating a remaining enhanced gut bio-brain is relatively easy with advanced AI  that would harness this incredible force of Nature.

 

As said, it could be for incredible, mind-boggling good, rapidly changing the face of medicine, health, and anti-aging exponentially, or like the atom, it could be a wonderful friend or turned to become a terrible weapon–it’s all how it’s programmed and who or what is in charge.

 

So before these scenarios happen beyond our control, if that’s even possible now,  what goes on presently and naturally, is that the good soldiers against the competitors are your innate “good” bacteria–natural flora.

There is already chemical warfare going on at every moment ( use of cytokines, antibodies,  endotoxins, vs our immune system and an intestinal wall blocking the invasions of penetrating bacteria), and our own defensive “biofilms”  that are being challenged, adapting, and created all the time as natural shields.

At this time, we use our outside allies for help, such as probiotics, adaptogens, botanicals, prebiotics, therapeutics, and medications,  to create temporary conditions, prevention, and barriers to hold off the opposition and the opportunists as best we can.

 

So on top of the troop-to-troop battles, there is a titanic communication battle, the QS, which is the fundamental and quintessential battlefield beyond relying on the immune system!

 

The immune system is but a step along the way, albeit an enormously important one in controlling communications–however, it’s not the complete answer or endpoint in itself alone.

 

So before this fictional, prediction-based scenario may get beyond us, beyond what we could ever do to control or trust in our limits of those who may hold the keys if things fall into the wrong hands, what can we do now?

 

That will be my next discussion on how we can now help “jam” the communications of deleterious microbes in creating their adverse biofilm chemistry as it exists today.

 

My advice…Keep informed! Pay attention! Keep asking questions!