This past week, I (sd) went to a interesting conference in sunny San Diego. The conference hotel was right on Mission Bay, so I spent a lot of time looking out over the water at sail boats and other water craft, as well as surfers on the ocean. I've decided that learning to sail a boat and surfing a big wave definitely need to go on the bucket list.
From what I understand, my dad was a pretty good sailor when he was growing up, and one of the hardest things for him and his family when he converted was his not going out with his family on their Sunday sailing trips, which was one of their big family past-times.
I suppose the love of the sea is something I inherited from my dad's side of the family as my general impression from my mom over the years (she may correct me on this) is that she is not much of a water person. (Although she attend our swim meets faithfully for many years.) I learned to love swimming from my dad, with his early morning sojourns to lap swim at the pool. But I think the pull of the sea is something that is not taught, it simply burns deeply and inconsolably within you as a natural inheritance.
For those of you who know my phobia of sharks, this may seem rather strange, but the two go hand in hand. My obsession over sharks comes from my utter fascination of the way that they can rule the ocean with their perfect adaptation as hunters. To stalk silently, stealthy their prey and they to unleash in a split second one of the most lethal killing attacks in all the animal kingdom. Of course, mostly here I'm thinking of great whites and tiger sharks, not sluggish ones like nurse and leopards, but even have that cool, calm poise of a top of the food chain predator. The only real threat to my all-time favorite animals, the dolphins and whales.
So sitting by the bay and on the beach also led me once more to consider how to find a good paying gig close to the ocean. The conference I was attending was called Beneficial Microbes, and most of the conference was focused on the role of gut commensal/symbiotic bacteria in human health and disease. But a portion of the talks were on the role of commensal/symbiotic bacteria in other systems (this is part of the one health initiative from the NIH, which finally recognizes the human health is intimately tied to healthy relationship between microbes, animals and humans.) Apparently one of the oldest branches of symbiotic bacteria studies looks at the role of commensal bacteria and sea sponges. Since most studies of human and animal commensal bacteria involve studying fecal matter, the speakers studying sponges took great delight in pointing out how much more attractive it was to go SCUBA diving to collect samples than it was collect poop. If only I had known earlier! Maybe I can convince the NIH that studying obesity/atherosclerosis in dolphins is a better model organism than mice. But of course, that would necessitate keeping dolphins in cavity, which would not be very soothing on the conscience.
On the subject of bacteria, one of talks that might be of interest to some of you was a talk on the role of H. pylori in the rise in asthma and allergic diseases. H. pylori is the only major bacteria that colonizes the stomach and is the major disease pathogen in stomach ulcers. But this speaker showed very interesting data which suggests that H. pylori eradication is a two-edged sword. For thousands of years, H. pylori used to be completely endemic in all human population with nearly 95% of human having it. In the past one hundred years or so, H. pylori presence has fallen to about only 5% of population. In the studies this person showed, the absence of H. pylori in a number of studies with twins and other matched population correlated with greater risk for asthma and other allergic diseases. Then in animal studies they were able to show that H. pylori tipped the response of immune cells from a Th2 response which favors allergic responses to a Th1 response. So he proposed that we need to consider that H. pylori is beneficial in the early years of life, to about 30, after which its benefit begins to wane and then become harmful. This hypothesis, a part of the "dissapearing microbe hypothesis" has replaced the "hygeine hypothesis" as the most favored explanation for the rapid and precipitous rise in allergic disease.
