Poop Doesn't Lie: What Fecal 'Forensics' Tells Us About Diet
A lightbulb moment hit as Lawrence David was chatting one day with an ecologist who studies the microbiomes and diets of large herbivores in the African savanna. David was envious. He'd been studying the human microbiome, and this ecologist had tons of animal statistics that were way more specific than what David had obtained from people.
"How on earth do you get all these dietary data?" David recalled asking. "Obviously, he didn't ask the animals what they ate."
All those specific statistics came from DNA sequencing of animal scat scooped up from the savanna.
Indeed.
Depending on when you read this, you may have the DNA of more than a dozen plant species, plus another three or four animal species, gurgling through your gut. That's the straight poop taken straight from, well, poop.
David and colleagues are analyzing the DNA in human feces to better understand digestion and the links between diet and health, potentially paving the way to treatments for diet-linked diseases.