Our Microbiome May Be Looking Out for Itself

This reminded me of a discussion of the "Red Queen Hypothesis"[0] in the book Daemon by Daniel Suarez[1].

It's alternately interesting and disturbing... the implication that much of our social behavior is to further the aims of microscopic puppet masters.

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(book_series)

This implies quite a lot of coordination. I participated in americangut.org and my guts contained 45 species of bacteria in measurable numbers (just one sample). Good tests for fungi are getting closer, but I don't have a hard number here, but I would assume at least a handful of species. And we have recently heard about bacteriophages interacting with bacteria in our microbiome as well. Unless all of these organisms developed similar mechanisms for manipulating us to similar ends, I would expect a microbial rugby match, not a puppet master.