Keeping humans safe, alive, functioning, in good health, and enjoying life is something we have been doing for ourselves and others for millennia—except that the “human” that families, communities, and civilizations have been trying to keep safe we now know to be a different animal, a superorganism. Keeping a complex, multispecies superorganism safe is a completely different ball game than just protecting a single-species mammal. What do you think is safe for the thousands of species in your body, for your microbial co-partners in life? In almost every case, the data that have been and are currently being collected by government regulatory agencies give us no clue. They may tell us what is safe for mammals but ignore the risk to the microbiome and the signs of a damaged microbiome. They have not been conducted in a way to ensure protection of your microbiome. Due diligence is not being done. No longer can our government, nor the food industry, nor pharmaceutical companies, nor the medical profession plead ignorance. And neither can you.
When it comes to your microbiome, it should be safety first.
Government agencies in country after country around the world are using global institutions such as the United Nations and World Health Organization to try to stem the tide of the NCD epidemic. At the same time such agencies realize that their past and present safety testing programs have not covered the microbiome. They have been misdirected and are currently of questionable use. Watch to see the different government responses. Those countries making decisions that err on the side of your safety are more likely to be supporting foods, environments, and lifestyles that support the health of all of you, the superorganism.
Consider government responses in the case of bisphenol A (BPA), the endocrine disruptor in baby bottles, food and drink packaging, medical tubing, and other plastics, which damages the immune and reproductive systems and, in doing so, contributes to the risk of NCDs. A 2010 publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrated that bisphenol A compromises the gut barrier, which is the key interface connecting our microbiome to our immune system. Not surprisingly, this causes misregulated inflammation. Which countries banned it quickly, and which are having to be dragged into actively protecting health at a vulnerable life stage, infancy? In the case of BPA both the timing and extent of bans were revealing. Canada’s ban took effect in 2010, Europe’s in 2011, South America’s (specifically Brazil, Argentina, and Ecuador) in 2012, and the United States’ partial ban began in 2013 after much consumer protest. That tells you who is in the forefront of environmental health concerns and who lags.
Here is another case to consider that is still in progress. As of March 2015, the NIH reported their research findings showing common food emulsifiers disrupt the gut microbiome and provide a pathway to NCDs, including inflammation-driven obesity. The biology seems clear on this toxic effect. How long will it take before precautions are taken to protect consumers? Which regulatory groups in which countries will act, and which won’t? While some may argue that we don’t want knee-jerk reactions to initial research results, the past few decades show us the health implications of foot-dragging when chemical toxicities and biological plausibility are clear. That is why we are seeing the ever-increasing rise in NCDs related to immune dysfunction. We are allowing ourselves to become incomplete humans.
The same issues relate to current uncertainties and the opportunities for consumers to make their own choices and control what goes into or on their own bodies. Which countries are proactive in helping consumers see the composition of their food, including food additives and modifiers, and which countries seem unconcerned? As a toxicologist, I say you have a right to know. Read the list of ingredients. Pay attention to the chemical components of your environment. Agencies and governments will follow. In a way, we are all toxicologists now. Canaries are notoriously sensitive to change in their environment. If the canary in the coal mine died, it signaled that the miners’ health was in jeopardy from odorless toxic gases. The microbiome is our new personal canary. Changes in the microbiome measured by changes in the metabolites in our breath or urine or the abundance of certain bacteria in feces can be an early warning of unhealthy chemical exposures.
We already know that some components of processed food (emulsifiers) and common drugs such as NSAIDs can be toxic for the microbiome at doses previously thought to be safe. But most chemicals and drugs have not been examined for toxicity to our microbiome. For those that have, the microbiome-drug interactions are extensive.
Government agencies have handled the uncertainty of toxicity in various ways. In the United States the burden of proof usually falls on whether something has been shown to be toxic beyond the shadow of a doubt—innocent until proven guilty, so to speak. In contrast, in Europe a different standard exists. This is known as the precautionary principle. Under this principle the default is that, if human harm is plausible, exposing large numbers of people to a new chemical or drug is considered too great a risk until it has been proven that the exposure is safe. So a suspect chemical or drug is held back until safety is established. The most celebrated decision under the precautionary principle concerns GMO foods. The precautionary principle has led Europe to block or move very slowly on GMO crops and foods, with each crop evaluated individually, whereas the reverse has been true in the US.
Regardless of your personal opinion on GMO safety, the research into our microbiome and the regulations surrounding it are a very different kind of issue. We know far more about genes and how they function than we know about the behavior of our microbial selves. We all have personal choices to make, but if anything, more caution seems warranted when it comes to the microbiome.
The herbicide glyphosate is at the center of the current debate about insecticides and herbicides, where regulation has focused on the safety of human mammalian cells. Glyphosate is not only the active component of a herbicide product produced by Monsanto, but is also part of the GMO strategy of producing glyphosate-resistant crops to grow in soil with ever-increasing concentrations of glyphosate. What does glyphosate do in soil? Among other things it selectively alters the ecosystem of environmental microbes, such as favoring the formation of some types of biofilms. A recent report from South America indicates that glyphosate reduces the presence of fungi symbiotic to grass roots that are needed to support foraging animals. Also, glyphosate can change things like antibiotic susceptibility or resistance in types of bacteria that are pathogenic to humans. The world is increasingly becoming a glyphosate-rich planet.
Amazingly, there are only a few studies examining how this massively distributed chemical affects the microbiome, and most of these studies are on food-producing animals. Nevertheless, they reveal reasons for concern. In a study of chicken gut microbes, researchers found that pathogenic bacteria were more resistant to glyphosate than were the helpful commensal bacteria.
In Germany, glyphosate shifted the mix of microbes in cows; in particular it reduced the natural protection provided by commensal bacteria in restricting the growth of botulism spores. There has been an increase in botulism-related disease in cattle in recent years, and glyphosate causes the problem by suppressing the antagonistic effect of Enterococcus species on Clostridium botulinum. We have a massive amount of a new chemical dumped into both the environment and the food chain without fully understanding the potential risk to our microbiome.
If your government doesn’t exercise due caution when it comes to the prevention of NCDs, then you may need to become proactive in avoiding foods, chemicals, and drugs when you aren’t satisfied with the level of ingredient and safety information that is provided.
Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, autism, Parkinson’s disease, celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and hundreds more NCDs are the new normal. They kill us, change our lives, make many of us invalid and ever more dependent upon others, drain our health services and pocketbooks, and in some cases stress government resources to the limits. We haven’t found the solution to date. But then again, we had hardly begun to understand the problem until now.
Having introduced the completed self hypothesis as a fundamental principle of a healthier life, in this final chapter I will briefly pull together the initiatives that can help you to seed, feed, and protect a robust, diversified microbiome. The fact that there is more than one diet and microbial mix that supports a healthy life adds complexity to your choices. But it also means you are not searching for a single fountain of youth. You are simply looking for one of several options, for a lifestyle that supports your personal ecosystem with its thousands of cohabitating species. It matters less what works for your neighbor than what works for your body.
Diet is connected to the microbiome, which is in turn connected back to dietary cravings. Both are connected to inflammation, which can be locked into place by a dysfunctional microbiome. Exercise can help lessen the risk of NCDs. Nevertheless, early-life programming and epigenetic factors can block even well-conceived attempts at later-life solutions. Single-factor solutions and single-life-stage views of the risk of NCDs are likely to be less successful than looking at all the ways you can support your whole body across the entire life span. Diet alone, exercise alone, and probiotics alone are all less likely to work than an integrated and comprehensive effort to support the whole you.
For many people, diet alone simply doesn’t work. If you are among those where diets did not take, it is not your fault or a lack of willpower. Brute-force diets don’t work for many of us because our microbes either fail to shift enough, or they don’t shift fast enough. The microbes will call for the foods (energy sources) that sustain them, and they know exactly how to make you crave those foods. In effect, a majority part of you is working against your well-intentioned diet. Having the wrong mix of microbes is like trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. There is a slight chance you can do it, but you might well damage everything in the process. Piecing together a healthy diet and installing the microbes in you that want that healthy diet is a much better strategy.
Note that in many countries probiotics are considered to be medical foods and should be taken under the guidance of health care professionals. It is important to work on diet and those things that metabolize the diet to the benefit of your whole superorganism. Probiotics such as those in many fermented foods have been consumed as a personal choice for centuries, yet in many ways the same microbes are regulated much like a drug if consumed outside the fermented food itself. You choose your meals three times a day without professional advice, but taking probiotics falls into a gray area. Consider the most commonly used probiotic found in many yogurts, Lactobacillus acidophilus. Is it a food if it exists naturally in food? Is it a food if a supplement is added to fortify it? Is it automatically a drug if taken separately from the food, or is it still a food supplement? These issues affect both what manufacturers can claim about probiotics and how the FDA handles them. As recently noted by the University of Maryland Medical Center, the US FDA has yet to approve Lactobacillus acidophilus for any medical use, even though some health care practitioners may recommend it. In fact, making disease claims about probiotics not approved as a new drug will get a company shut down.
Each of us needs to take some initiative, but the road to a healthy microbiome gradually requires less effort. Apart from simply feeling better, when your microbiome is better balanced, it will not only accept but crave good healthy food. Meanwhile, here are ten wide-ranging key suggestions for becoming a healthier superorganism based on the new biology. They are healthy choices.
These ten initiatives are a good start. But let us dig a little more into the details of some of the things you can take action on now.
If the microbiome is severely altered from a healthy balance, consumption of a single probiotic strain is unlikely to bring everything back into balance. For this reason, many clinical trials have used combinations of probiotics along with prebiotics and even antioxidants to attack inflammation. NCDs such as obesity are pro-inflammatory conditions where the healthier ratio of higher Bacteroidetes to lower Firmicutes has been reversed, with Firmicutes becoming the more predominant group. The goal of rebiosis, including consumption of probiotics, is to reverse the imbalance.
Probiotics aren’t just things you swallow. They have been used in the nose, mouth, and vagina, and topically on skin. Tablets containing Lactobacillus reuteri have been effective in reducing inflammation associated with periodontal disease. Lactobacilli and, in particular, those related to L. acidophilus (L. crispatus, L. gasseri, and L. jensenii), are useful for making the vagina more acidic and protecting against bacterial vaginosis. L. plantarum has been used for respiratory tract priming. L. rhamnosus has been used in nasal priming to prevent damaging inflammation.
Rebiosis and protection of the skin microbiome is in its infancy. But a wealth of probiotic and prebiotic products are likely to become available soon to enhance skin health. Both oral and topical applications of probiotics have been studied. In mice, oral intake of Bifidobacterium breve B-3 protected the skin of the animals from photo damage by ultraviolet radiation. Lactobacillus plantarum HY7714 had a similar effect, preventing the skin from drying out and thickening after UV exposure.
In a human pilot study, a new probiotic cosmetic containing the skin bacterium Staphylococcus epidermidis was tested and found to enhance the lipid content of skin and keep the skin from drying out. Such things as microbially based sunscreens and cosmetics are on the horizon.
According to a 2006 World Health Organization definition, probiotics are live microbes that can promote health when given in appropriate amounts. They can comprise a single microbial species or a mixture. Usually, these are ingested with the idea of altering gut microbe makeup. This may occur as the ingested microbes take up residence in specific areas of your gut. Alternatively, some microbes may simply spend time in the gut digesting their preferred foods. Through their brief presence and with chemicals they produce, they can also affect other microbes in the area and your own mammalian cells. The International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics, whose membership spans academia, industry, and government, is a useful source of information about probiotics in foods and supplements.
In most cases, probiotic consumption has focused on ingesting microbe-containing foods or dietary supplements with the aim of altering the makeup and/or the function of our gut microbes. However, in theory, there could be probiotics for the skin, airways, or reproductive tract as well. You may soon see advertisements for reproductive probiotics. In this case, the probiotic is likely to be applied rather than ingested. Ironically, today probiotics are encountered by a majority of people as supplements to our diet. However, this was not always the case. For earlier generations, probiotic consumption was thought of as an integral part of the diet. Each geographic area and culture had its own source of food microbes. We know these foods today under the general name of fermented foods.
Ideas about the possible health benefits of what are now known as probiotics date back centuries. Even early human civilization took advantage of the health benefits of probiotics via the consumption of various fermented foods. Fermentation is a process in which an organism such as a bacterium or yeast takes up a carbohydrate as a desired food. This would often be a starch or a type of sugar. Via digestion of this food, the organism produces various waste products. This is usually an alcohol, an acid, or a gas. These specific waste products have the effect of making the food more acidic (lowering the pH). The change in pH and the environment of the food itself has a protective effect that prevents food from spoiling and stops the growth of pathogen-producing microbes. In the absence of refrigeration, fermented food could be stored longer and consumed safely. This was a massive benefit for ancient civilizations where food availability was often a life-or-death issue. Indigenous peoples of virtually every region on earth developed fermented foods to support life and health within their societies.
Fermentation was used by the Sumerians, Babylonians, ancient Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. The foods these ancient cultures fermented included bread, sauces (e.g., soy), dairy (milk and cheese), vegetables (such as cabbage, turnip, squash, and carrots), alcoholic beverages (e.g., wine and beer), meats (e.g., sausage), and chocolate. Fermented foods we see today include amasi, ayran, various cheeses, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, pickled herring, poi, soy sauce, sourdough bread, torshi, yogurt, tempeh, and traditionally made cod-liver oil. Most regions of Africa have multiple types of fermented foods that have been handed down from their ancestors. Each food is tailored to the produce that could be grown in that specific region.
If fermented foods are not a part of your regular diet, you are not alone. Consumption of these foods has waned as westernized processed foods have grown in impact. An additional fact is that the national food guides published by government and medical agencies are virtually devoid of fermented foods. Researchers have speculated that, because many of these foods have been prepared in homes rather than via large-scale production through major commercial food companies, fermented foods have simply been off the radar when it comes to recommended nutrition.
In fact, a group of research scientists in Canada recently examined both the traditions of fermented foods across virtually every culture and the exclusion of them from virtually every government-based nutritional guide. You won’t find them in the food pyramids of the United States (via the USDA), China, or Japan. One exception seems to be India, where fermented foods have been recommended for pregnant women. Occasionally, yogurts may be mentioned in some guidelines. This is something that needs to change as we shift from a focus solely on the mammalian human to a more complete view of the feeding and care of our superorganism. We should seize every safe opportunity to support our superorganism.
There is a distinction between fermented foods, pickled foods, and foods with live probiotic cultures. Fermented foods have the benefits of containing probiotic bacteria and/or yeast. The microbes may or may not be alive at the time they are consumed. The microbes grew in the food and metabolized food components to produce microbial metabolites. For example, the activity of the bacteria in dairy products can reduce lactose, thus making the product more digestible for some individuals. However, if the “fermented” foods have been pasteurized, this kills the microbial cultures. No live probiotic bacteria will be ingested if the food has been excessively heated. Therefore, it is useful to examine exactly what the label says in terms of food processing to determine if the food contains live, active cultures. Of course, when possible, preparation of fermented foods at home is one way to know how a food was handled. It will most likely be more economical as well. A short list of some popular fermented foods is described below.
I have some personal experience with fermented foods, although until recently it was the lack thereof. The one most closely connected to my family is sauerkraut. I should note that while sauerkraut is most closely associated with German culture, pickled cabbage dishes existed in ancient Rome and were a staple of the armies of Genghis Khan and the Tartars. Its adoption in Germany was probably later. Dutch and English ship captains took sauerkraut with them on voyages as a long-lasting food staple and for protection against scurvy. In addition to gathering fresh fruit whenever he could, British naval captain James Cook took thousands of pounds of sauerkraut with him on his almost three-year-long voyage launched in 1768 to circle to globe. Reports suggest that the regular sailors resisted eating it until Cook ordered it served daily at the captain’s table and for officers. Variations on pickled cabbage recipes are known in France as choucroute and in Russia as shchi. Some recent efforts are under way to standardize sauerkraut production with specific bacterial isolates of Lactobacillus plantarum and Leuconostoc mesenteroides.
My own family’s experience with sauerkraut mirrors what happened across different communities and cultures. My father’s side of the family was part of a migratory wave from Germany to the Texas hill country in the early 1850s. Sauerkraut was a staple. Fast-forward to the twentieth century, when my great-grandfather and great-grandmother were both fluent in German and, when excited, my dad’s oma would slip into her ancestral language. Sauerkraut, along with a special cookie, was core to their diet.
In the next generation, my grandfather still spoke German and, in his youth, was a US Army motorcade driver during World War I. He was occasionally asked to help translate when German troops were encountered along the roads. Later, he was a San Antonio city councilman. Again sauerkraut was prevalent in this household, which included my father. While my father occasionally requested it as a food from his youth, he hadn’t learned how to cook it, and my mother (Scots-Irish background) had little experience preparing it. Additionally, she would always comment on the days of lengthy preparation and lingering kitchen odors after any attempt. As a result I grew up with a generally negative view of this traditional stinky food. If you ever encountered it, you know store-bought sauerkraut of the 1960s was not pouring off the shelves for good reason. It was nothing like homemade. This parallels the experience of my wife, who, as a little girl, ate sauerkraut once a week when her father had it on Saturdays with hot dogs. After his death, this food and that tradition were gone from the family. One of our friends had a similar experience growing up in California in the mid-twentieth century as sauerkraut waned as the older generation passed. Through similar experiences, traditional fermented foods can become lost from our diets.
Kimchi is a Korean staple that was originally made from cabbage but has since included other vegetables as base ingredients. It is so popular, so much a part of Korean history, and so connected to health promotion that the Korea Tourism Organization site promotes it as one of the reasons to visit Korea. In addition to a high fiber content, it contains several vitamins and minerals and, of course, the live Lactobacillus bacteria that help in the fermentation process. Among these is one named for the dish itself, Lactobacillus kimchii, but it includes Leuconostoc and Weissella bacteria as well. Among the numerous variations of kimchi, consumption tends to vary by region of the country and season of the year. There is even a museum devoted to kimchi located in Seoul.
In the beverage category, kombucha is a sweetened black tea with a slight fizz that has been around for thousands of years. Green tea versions have been developed as well. The beverage contains multiple species of both bacteria and yeast and goes under different names in different countries. It is thought to have originated somewhere in northern Asia (possibly China). Most preparations contain a pancake-like film on top called a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), with the effervescing, slightly sour liquid underneath.
Kombucha is known to contain several B vitamins and, depending on the length of fermentation, some vitamin C. While it has been used for a variety of ailments for centuries, actual health impact remains to be firmly established. Additionally, some caution is appropriate to avoid excessive stomach acid and risk of ulcers or allergic reactions. The beverage has become available even in discount chains, and in some eateries is sold on tap. Refermentation in certain bottled preparations also has been a concern since it could lead to higher-than-expected alcohol content. Various positive health effects have been attributed to its consumption.
Miso is among the oldest probiotic-containing fermented foods. It originated in Japan as a salt-containing, fermented, soybean-based food. The microbial part of miso is a fungus called Aspergillus oryzae. The metabolism of some chemicals in soy by the fungus is thought to convey some of the reported benefits of miso. Antioxidants are among these fungal metabolites. Some versions of miso add barley and other grains as well as other microorganisms in the fermentation process. The food is often sold as a refrigerated paste to be used as a condiment in soups and other foods. To preserve the active cultures in miso and avoid killing off the active microorganisms with heat, miso is often added to foods at the end of cooking or even as foods are cooling. Among the properties recently attributed to miso is the degradation of histamine.
Tempeh originated in Indonesia and is made from whole beans that are fermented. It was originally made from soybeans, though some modern-day recipes substitute other types of beans. Tempeh is started with a fungus, Rhizopus oligosporus, that produces a natural antibiotic that works against certain gut pathogens. The food is also high in antioxidant properties.
Kvass is a Russian beverage that was traditionally made using a type of sourdough bread, resulting in something akin to beer but without the alcohol content. However, there are many variations on this that replace the grains with fruits or vegetables. Among the most popular is beet kvass. As a probiotic source, this is excellent in that beets provide useful nutrients plus their own sugar, and the fermentation process adds the probiotic bacteria. All that is needed then is salt and water. Often whey is added as well to affect the type of bacteria that grow in the mix. Among the bacteria associated with kvass are Lactobacillus casei, Leuconostoc mesenteroides, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Africa has its own varieties of fermented foods. Among these is the probiotic milk drink called amasi. It emerged among traditional people of several African countries (e.g., Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa). While the name may be in common across country borders, the exact mix of bacteria in the cultures can differ. However, lactic-acid-producing bacteria appear to lead the way among the microbial mixtures. One of the suggested benefits is that consumption of amasi reduces the prevalence of diarrheal diseases. This may occur through protection against certain pathogenic strains of E. coli bacteria. In analysis of amasi, Lactococcus lactis was the predominant isolate, with several species from Leuconostoc and Enterococcus also prevalent.
Central and South America also have a fermented foods tradition. In Peru, the Inca drank a type of corn beer made with maize called chicha de jora. Other areas of Central and South America used different base foods such as cassava, potatoes, quinoa, rice, and pineapple. A recent analysis of chicha found numerous bacterial genera represented (Lactobacillus, Bacillus, Leuconostoc, Enterococcus, Streptomyces, Enterobacter, Acinetobacter, Escherichia, Cronobacter, Klebsiella).
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How would a microbiome-supportive diet differ from generally healthy diets? It might not differ at all. A microbiome-supportive diet is likely to include some fermented foods as a natural way to supply both probiotics and microbial metabolites. It would include prebiotics designed to promote the growth and revival of your helpful microbial co-partners. These would include fiber and sugars that are indigestible by your mammalian parts but feed your specific microbes. Prebiotics would include things like (1) resistant starches such as those as found in raw bananas, (2) inulin, a group of polysaccharides, found in onion, chicory, garlic, and asparagus, (3) fructo-oligosaccharides, many of which are breakdown products of inulin, and (4) galacto-oligosaccharides, which are breakdown products of lactose. In a human trial with stressed college students, the administration of a prebiotic galacto-oligosaccharide supplement was found to reduce gastrointestinal diseases and the duration and severity of colds.
You have probably heard that exercise is good for you. It supports your heart and circulation as well as immune and neurological functions. There are numerous programs designed to encourage a lifestyle with regular exercise beginning with children in schools, continuing as adults enter the workplace, and persisting among the elderly as well. With other aspects of the microbiome, we are only beginning to appreciate how environmental conditions, including lifestyle, can affect the composition and diversity of our co-partners.
The level of exercise seems to affect the ratio of Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes in the gut, as well as microbial production of metabolites such as short-chain fatty acids (butyrate, acetate, propionate). Too little exercise can be associated with an unhealthy microbial balance and/or a leaky gut, allowing bacterial metabolites into areas of the body in concentrations that enhance rather than dampen inflammation. Overexercise with serious calorie restriction (creating something similar to anorexia) restricts the number of useful gut microbes. A happy medium of food intake and exercise level lies between the extremes, helping us maintain an immune-balanced, anti-inflammatory mix of personal microbes.
Some researchers have described effects of exercise on the microbiome that are independent of diet. In fact, when you are working through the microbiome, exercise can blunt the adverse effects of a high-fat diet. In research using rodents, voluntary versus forced exercise (which is a type of stressor) produced opposite impacts on the microbiome as well as on the levels of inflammation, with voluntary exercise being more anti-inflammatory. With forced exercise, rodents are made to run on a treadmill rather than allowed to choose to use it. That stresses them out, negating the otherwise useful benefits of the physical movement, and hurts the microbiome. The difference might be analogous to your choosing to use the gym’s treadmill or spend an evening swing dancing versus having to run across London or New York City in a rainstorm because you missed your bus and can’t get a taxi. The latter involves physical movement but is unlikely to help your microbiome. Finally, in a mouse study, exercise was shown to spare, in part, the toxic effects of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) exposure through its effects on the gut microbiome.
These findings indicate the importance of exercise as a way to maintain a healthy microbiome.
Across this book’s chapters I have discussed the completed self-hypothesis, the new biology, the revolution in medicine, and the opportunities for self-care that lead the way toward reversing the epidemic of NCDs. So much is changing as we embrace ourselves not simply as individuals but rather as a community of cooperative species, an entire ecosystem. But it is presenting us with a golden opportunity for improved health and well-being.
We are just now beginning to discover and appreciate the living organisms within us that make health and life possible. Yet it wasn’t always so, and to illustrate just how much our views have changed, here’s a vignette from the life of Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin.
In the early 1930s, Charles Wilson, who was dean of the medical school at St. Mary’s, where Fleming worked, had the opportunity to build a new school. As part of it, Almroth Wright, Fleming’s mentor and boss, got a new Institute of Pathology attached to Wilson’s school. In 1933, the new buildings were finished. They were so prestigious that, on December 12, King George V and Queen Mary were on hand to open them. Wright wanted impressive displays for the inoculation department, and Fleming decided to get artistic. He created germ paintings using bacteria with different pigments.
To make his paintings, Fleming took sketches executed on absorbent cards or blotting paper and filled them in using chromogenic bacteria he’d grown on agar plates. Through a painstaking process, differently colored bacteria were used to create new works of art . . . He produced landscapes, ballerinas, guardsmen, and a fleur-de-lis in St. Mary’s blue. Quite special above all of his works, and appropriate for this royal visit, he painted the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom, using bacteria.
When Queen Mary came by and saw it, she was not amused and sniffed, “Yes—but what good is it?”
The beauty of the microbial world is a new discovery, yet it is ancient, and it is very much our own.