Symbiotic bacteria and pheromones

By: James V. Kohl | Published on: November 12, 2013

Microbial Mediators

Researchers show that symbiotic bacteria can help hyenas communicate with one another.

By | November 11, 2013

Excerpt: “Only now are we discovering the role of what we think of as inconsequential passengers—the bacteria—and how important they are.”
My comment: The microbial metabolism of nutrients in bodily secretions that results in sex differences in species-specific social odors called pheromones, which correlate with reproductive state, has been detailed in publications that predate “A Fear of Pheromones” by Lewis Thomas  (1971). The idea that more than 40 years later “Only now are we discovering the role of symbiotic bacteria…” exemplifies how that fear has retarded scientific progress across disciplines.
Progress has been retarded despite what is known about the conserved molecular mechanisms of nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled alternative splicings that link the epigenetic ‘landscape’ to the physical landscape of DNA in the organized genomes of species from microbes to man. See also: Nutrient–dependent / pheromone–controlled adaptive evolution: a model for examples of what the microbiome contributes to the divergence of species (e.g., everything).
What did you think caused species diversity? Is there a model for that?
Kudos to Kevin Theis and his colleagues for making more progress towards extending molecular epigenetics across species than might otherwise have been considered possible by theoretical biologists, evolutionary psychologists, and human ethologists who have not yet learned that Bird odour predicts reproductive success just as Scent marking increases male reproductive success in wild house mice, and that pheromones control the physiology of nutrient-dependent reproduction across species. If understanding the biology of adaptive behaviors requires pattern recognition, there are clearly too many researchers who do not recognize this pattern in vertebrates or how the pattern originated in microbes and was conserved across many vertebrate species via the insertion of achiral glycine in the molecule of gonadatropin releasing hormone.


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