From grargall@alphalink.com.au Mon Jun 14 11:53:21 1999 Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 12:07:40 +1000 From: Argall Family To: John Lozier , BILL DUESING <71042.2023@compuserve.com>, Blind.Copy.Receiver@compuserve.com, sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Subject: RE: Soil and Human Intestines, etc [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] John asked, some time ago (I've been away, not seen other answers though): ->I wonder what the dry mass of independent organisms living within a human being amounts to. I mean, relative to the human part of our body. Anybody know? My understanding is that it's about 10% dry weight. (But I'm staying wet thank you - "Life is an aqueous experience" Marston Bates, The Nature of Natural History, Princeton Science Library http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/4743.html ) This sort of figure makes you realise how really simplistic our 'Listerine' thinking about fighting bacteria really is - when you realise that our survival depends on internal microorganism, much as does the rest of life, and underscores the importance of whole systems in healthy organic growing, for people or food. If people accept such a state within themselves, then they will find it easier to see the complexity of a plant's association with the soil. Lyn Margulis argues http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/reviews/books/asbmicr.html that some functions currently performed by intestinal bacteria, for example production of vitamin B12, will eventually be taken over by hosts of the bacteria. Leaving aside the still independent microorganisms, we need to be very aware that there is very modest scientific understanding of the roles of organelles in cells or their origins. Notable among organelles are the mitochondria of which we may, depending on health, have ten to a thousand in each cell. Mitochondria have their own DNA (the formerly Unknown [US] Vietnam Soldier was identified not by his own cellular DNA but by his mitochondria's DNA). While they farm some of the maintenance of their genetic needs out to nuclear DNA, the mitochondria retain (in all cells with nuclei, in all life forms) the roles of respiration and steroidogenesis, without which life generally would have neither form nor performance. I think that wider understanding the complexity of this web of life within organisms - far more complex than the commonly discussed food chains and patterns of parasitism, symbiosis and predation between whole organisms - is very important to getting people to see the world as a bit more complex that that of a 'dominant' species having rights or obligations. We may thing we need to eat well for ourselves, but we give little conscious thought to the physiological and emotional needs (if I may venture the latter to exist) to the United Nations inside us. Dennis To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail