Morteza Karami

“When they stressed the mice by placing them in a tube, both groups produced stress hormones, but in the germ-free mice the hormone concentrations were twice as high. Without their microbiota, the mice had found the situation much more stressful.”
― Alanna Collen, 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness

“If the nature-over-nurture idea that your personality is not your own hard-earned creation but a product of your genes makes you feel uneasy, how about the concept of a personality composed by the bacteria living in your gut? Mice without gut microbes are antisocial, preferring to spend time alone rather than with other mice. Whereas a mouse with a normal microbiota will choose to meet and greet any new mice added to its cage, germ-free mice stick with mice they already know. Simply having gut microbes seems to make them more friendly. Beyond friendship, it’s possible that your microbiota may even affect who you are attracted to.”
― Alanna Collen, 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness

“See how the wings, striking against the air, sustain the heavy eagle in the thin air on high,” he noted, then added, “As much force is exerted by the object against the air as by the air against the object.”16 Two hundred years later, Newton would state a refined version of this as his third law of motion: “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.”
― Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci

“The finger-like projections grow longer at the insistence of microbes, making the surface area large enough to capture the energy it needs from food. It’s been estimated that rats would need about 30 per cent more to eat if it weren’t for their microbes.”
― Alanna Collen, 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness