Wasn't there recently a discussion of a risk of methanol formation from an ethanol producing strain? I sure hope that none of your strains produce ethanol.

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vibrio 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Slightly different point but many bacteria in us right now also make lipopolysaccharide (LPS). If it were purified and injected iv, the LPS in me could probably kill me 1000 x over.

	▲	OutOfHere 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Nothing about this discussion was about injecting anything.
	▲	echelon 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		LPS is a critical component of gram negative bacteria, like E. coli. We evolved LPS detection so long ago that it's in our innate immune system instead of adaptive immunity. It's so ancient we share this immune function with fruit flies. LPS detection is so good and immediate because it's tuned to pick up single instances of LPS molecules. Not a few nmol. Single molecules. Detection will trigger inflammation and immune scale up to deal with the problem. If you go injecting LPS or E coli into your blood stream, of course your own body is going to kill you. It'll freak out and think WW III has started and begin firing the nukes in every direction to stop it. This is septic shock.

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cluckindan 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Why not? Ethanol kills competing bacteria and is only produced in microscopic quantities.

Methanol is produced by a lot of bacteria, almost every human produces it within their body.

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OutOfHere 2 days ago | parent [-]

Isn't methanol a strong poison? I do not believe that any probiotic or native strains produce it.

Chemically the problem with ethanol is that it's too close to methanol.

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cluckindan 2 days ago | parent [-]

From Wikipedia:

”Small amounts of methanol are present in normal, healthy human individuals. One study found a mean of 4.5 ppm in the exhaled breath of test subjects.[19] The mean endogenous methanol in humans of 0.45 g/d may be metabolized from pectin found in fruit; one kilogram of apple produces up to 1.4 g of pectin (0.6 g of methanol.)[20]”

”Ingestion of as little as 3.16 grams of methanol can cause irreversible optic nerve damage, and the oral LD50 for humans is estimated to be 56.2 grams.[66]”

19: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0967-3334/27/7/00...

20: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.1997...

66: https://aoemj.org/journal/view.php?doi=10.1186/s40557-017-01...

	▲	OutOfHere a day ago \| parent [-]
		It doesn't mean it's safe to risk adding to the burden. The danger is that low-grade non-acute toxicity over the natural level could still be harmful over time. All it could take is one mutation.