This document summarizes a presentation by Rodney Dietert on training the human-microbial superorganism. It discusses how Dietert found his superorganism through research linking the microbiome to health and disease. He learned that humans are majority microbial and the microbiome helps produce our identity through volatile compounds. Microbial dysbiosis can lead to inflammation and disease. Dietert trained his own superorganism after years of antibiotics by adjusting his microbiome and diet. He provides three takeaway points on the importance of microbiome seeding at birth, co-maturation of the immune and microbial systems, and basing safety assessments on the human superorganism.

1. artwork by Scott Draves (www.electricsheep.org)
Rodney Dietert, Professor
Cornell University
rrd1@cornell.edu
How to Train Your Superorganism

2. Question?
• Allergies (food/
asthma/rhinitis/dermatitis)
• Cancer
• Obesity
• Diabetes
• Cardiovascular disease
• Arthritis
• Autism spectrum
• ADD/ADHD
• Celiac disease
• IBD (Crohn’s, UC)
• Lupus
• Autoimmune thyroiditis
• Depression
• Osteoporosis
• Frailty
• Dementia
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Parkinson’s disease
• Hypertension
• Sleep disorders
• PCOS
• COPD
• Chronic kidney disease
• Psoriasis
• Multiple sclerosis

3. • Already the Number #1 Cause of Mortality Worldwide (63%)*
• Dramatically Impacts Both Productivity and Quality of Life
• Estimated to Cost 48% of Global GDPs by 2030*
• Most Chronic Diseases are Increasing in Prevalence
• 45.3% of all US adults age 65 and above have two or more
chronic diseases: a 20% increase from the previous decade.*
*Joint 2011 report: Harvard School of Public Health and World Economic Forum
and NCHS Data Brief Number 100, July 2012
Noncommunicable Diseases and Conditions (NCDs)
are the Greatest Threat to Sustainable Healthcare

4. Outline
1. How I found my Superorganism
2. What I learned from my Superorganism
3. How I trained my Superorganism (and you can too)

5. How I Found My Superorganism

6. Scientific Challenge
If you could pick ONE sign that best
distinguishes a lifetime of health
from one filled with disease
……what would that be????
[Challenge was issued for an invited paper for a
special issue of the physics journal ENTROPY]

7. My Answer
(upon waking from a dream)
Self completion
of the
human-microbial
superorganism

8. The Completed Self: An Immunological
View of the Human-Microbiome
Superorganism and Risk of Chronic
Diseases
Entropy 2012, 14 (11), 2036-2065
R Dietert, J Dietert

9. Self-Completion - The Completed Self
Host-specific,
Family-sourced microbiota
Self
Completion
See: Dietert and Dietert, Entropy 14(11), 2036-2065, 2012 and
Dietert, Birth Defects Research Part B. 101(4): 333-340, 2014

10. 2014 documentary film
Wellcome Trust screening
– Jan. 30, 2015

11. Note: the brief Microbirth film
clips were excluded from this slide
set.

12. What I Learned From My
Superorganism

13. The Complete Human: Three Domains of Life
Eukaryota
Archaea
Bacteria
Majority-
Microbial
Humans
(based on cell
and gene
numbers)
Domains of Life Genomes
First
~ 25,000 genes
Approximately
90% microbial
by cell number
Second
~ 10 million genes
Superorganism
Mammalian
Microbial
Eukaryotes

14. Archaea – also in your gut

15. Earlier Microbial Partners
Lynn Marguluis, famed biologist (former spouse of Carl Sagan),
published her endosymbiosis theory in 1967concerning the bacterial
origins of both mitochondria and chloroplasts.
Crisp et al. Genome Biology 2015, 16:50
New examples of horizontally transferred genes were recently identified in humans.
Apparently, our second genome can become part of our first genome.

16. Our Microbiome Produces a “Fingerprint”
of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)
Arasaradnam et al. PLoS One. 2014 Oct 16;9(10):e107312.
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in urine can be used to
differentiate celiac disease from irritable bowel syndrome based on
distinctive microbiome-produced metabolites.
Bezerra de Araujo Filho et al. Archaea. 2014 Oct 13;2014:576249.
Children living near a sanitary landfill had elevated breath
methane correlated with elevated methane producing Archaea
in the gut microbiome (unrelated to socio economic status).

17. Microbial Dysbiosis and Impending C. Difficile Outbreaks
See: Bomers et al. A detection dog to identify patients with Clostridium difficile infection during a hospital
outbreak. J Infect. 2014 Nov;69(5):456-61.
Cliff, the original C. Difficile detection dog
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2247688/Meet-Cliff-remarkable-super-sniffing-dog-detects-hospital-superbugs.html

18. Who are you really? and…. How (healthy) are you?

19. Microbiota are seen as an “Integral Organ”
If they are missing, it analogous to
a form of birth defect.
Ramifications of Self Incompleteness
e.g., Clarke et el.,
Minireview: Gut microbiota: the neglected endocrine organ.
Mol Endocrinol. 2014 Aug;28(8):1221-38.
Brown JM, Hazen SL. The gut microbial endocrine organ:
bacterially derived signals driving cardiometabolic diseases.
Annu Rev Med. 2015 Jan 14;66:343-59.
Evans et al. The gut microbiome: the role of a virtual organ in
the endocrinology of the host.
J Endocrinol. 2013 Aug 28;218(3):R37-47.

20. Effective Microbiome-Mediated
Immune Maturation
Ineffective Microbiome-Mediated
Immune Maturation
Managing the Human Ecosystem
for Effective Immune Maturation and Tolerance

21. Brain – Who’s Running the Show?
Food
preferences
and cravings
Neurobehavior
Kin recognition
Mating behavior
See:
Lize et al.,
Trends Ecol Evol.
2013 Jun;28(6):325-6;
Alcock et al.
Bioessays
36(10):
940-949
2014;

22. Misregulated Inflammation
is
A feature of gut microbial dysbiosis
A tie that binds non-communicable
diseases and conditions (NCDs)
together

23. From: Dietert, DeWitt, Germolec and Zelikoff , Environ. Health Perspect. 118:1091-9, 2010
Non-Communicable Diseases Cluster Together

24. Diabetes, Obesity,
Colitis, Asthma,
Celiac disease
Diabetes,
Obesity
Colitis,
Asthma,
Celiac disease
microbiome
adjustment
as part of
adult
disease
management
microbiome
adjustment
for pregnancy
and to
optimize
microbiome
seeding
Birth:
Vaginal
vs.
Cesarean
healthy
microbiome
seeding
plan
feeding
the
microbiota
for optimized
immune and microbial
co-maturation
Risk of
future
generations
for
various
immune
dysfunction-
promoted
NCDs
Perinatal Period

25. Is it safe?
The New “Organism” for Safety

26. Environmental chemicals and drugs
reported to affect the gut microbiome
(Note added: In contrast with antibiotics, Vitamin D is on the list
because it affects, but does not necessarily “harm,” the microbiome.
Many people are, in fact, deficient in Vitamin D. In the Ooi et al. paper
listed below, it shifts the microbiome to increase protection AGAINST
colitis)
• Heavy metals (e.g., cadmium, lead, arsenic)
• Other metals (iron, selenium, zinc)
• PCBs (Choi et al., EHP 2013)
• Particulate matter (PM10) (Kish et al. PloS One 2013)
• Chlopyrifos (Joly et al, ESPRI, 2013)
• High fat diet (Myles et al. Plos One 2014)
• Valproate (de Theije et al. Brain Behav Immun 2013)
• Antibiotics (Ng et al., Nature 2013)
• Vitamin D (Ooi et al., J.Nutr 2013)

27. The Microbiome Filters Virtually All Exposures
and Directly Participates in Epigenetic Alterations
Proposed New Environmental Health Assessment Model
Adapted from: Dietert and Silbergeld, Toxicol. Sci. in press, April 2015 print issue
Microbiome

28. How I Trained My Superorganism
(and you can too)

29. My Personal Superorganism
Later-Life Training
Problem:
30 years of multiple rounds of antibiotics.
each year.
Solution:
Adjusted my microbiome, adjusted what I fed it.
Best year for my health in at least 30 years.
Qualifications: I am not a MD. This is my personal
story and it is not intended to be nor is it
medical advice.

30. Alexander Fleming’s Microbial Art
Notice the bottle feeding – probably not with breast milk
Image via:
The Alexander
Fleming
Laboratory
Museum
and
Smithsonian
exhibition

31. Da Vinci in Microbes
http://www.wired.com/2012/09/bacteriogoraphy/?pid=3733
Zachary Copfer,
microbiologist
and photographer.
He microbially
“grows”
the photographic
images.

32. Microbial Tree of Life
From: http://www.microbialart.com/
Credits to:
Dr. T. Ryan
Gregory
(Canada),
Dr. Simon
Park
(United
Kingdom),
and Dr.
Niall
Hamilton
(New
Zealand).

33. Three Take-Home Points
• Failure to self-complete in the newborn may be
the single greatest health risk across a lifetime.
We need microbiome seeding on every birth
plan and active management of our “second
genome” (i.e., seed, feed, protect).
• The immune system and the microbiome need
to co-mature in a narrow window of
development or persistent immune dysfunction
and elevated risk of NCDs are likely.
• Safety needs to be based on the whole human.
It is the superorganism that needs protection.

34. Links to some open-access papers
(you can download the papers for free)
http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/14/11/2036
Original Completed Self paper (2012):
The microbiome and sustainable healthcare (2015)
http://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/3/1/100
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amed/2014/867805/
Programming of the immune system for non-communicable diseases (2014)
http://microbirth.com/
Microbirth movie site: Note for all Cornell people,
the movie is freely-available for streaming from Kanopy via the Cornell Library site.
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/118/8/ehp.1001971.pdf
Clusters of non-communicable diseases (free PDF)

35. Acknowledgements
• Dr. Ellen Silbergeld, Johns Hopkins School of
Public Health
co-author and co-developer of the new
environmental health model
• Janice Dietert, Performance Plus Consulting,
co-author and editor

36. Thank You!
Discussion
…….and Yoghurt
Thanks to Ithaca Water Buffalo

37. Ithaca Water Buffalo
Ithaca Water Buffalo maintains a herd of 100
female animals.
Water Buffalo produce about 2 gallons of milk a
day.
Milk is heated and pasteurized (170˚ F for 30 min)
Milk is cooled to 100˚F
Yogurt Culture is added
Cultured Milk is placed in the cup
Milk is incubated ay 100˚F for ~ 12 h
“Probiotic” Bacteria ferment the milk sugar
(lactose) into acid (lactic acid)
Yogurt is blast chilled to 36˚ F to “set” the solid