u/Abstract_Only

Pneumatosis intestinalis (PI) is a condition where gas accumulates inside the intestinal wall instead of in the lumen. It shows up in human gastroenterology too, but it's become an emerging problem specifically in western lowland gorillas under managed care, with no biomarkers to predict or prevent it.

The interesting microbiome angle: gorillas are obligate hindgut fermenters. In the wild they eat fibrous browse where intact plant cell walls force sequential enzyme access, pacing fermentation and keeping hydrogen production in balance with disposal (mostly via methanogenic archaea). Zoo diets are extruded pellets and cultivated produce that dump rapidly fermentable substrate into the hindgut all at once. The hypothesis is that this drives hydrogen spikes that physically infiltrate intestinal tissue.

The Dutton Lab at the University of Florida already has 16S data on 15 captive gorillas showing individual-specific dysbiosis patterns. The problem is 16S can't see archaea, can't characterize fungi, and tells you nothing about what the community is actually metabolizing. They're crowd-funding $10K to add Oxford Nanopore shotgun metagenomics on 30-40 samples to directly profile CAZymes, hydrogen production/disposal pathways, SCFA biosynthesis, and sulfur metabolism. Pre-registered, deposit to SRA, open-source pipeline.

Proposal here: https://www.researchhub.com/proposal/26127/functional-capacity-of-the-gorilla-gut-microbiome-linking-metabolic-pathways-to-pneumatosis-intestinalis-via-nanopore-shotgun-metagenomics

Curious what people here think about the hydrogen-economy framing. Has anyone seen analogous patterns in human SIBO/IBS work where rapidly fermentable substrate plus altered methanogen load tracks with gas-related pathology?

This study is from the Dutton Lab at the University of Florida. They are running a longitudinal 16S survey on 15 captive gorillas, and some have developed PI with no obvious dietary or behavioral predictor.

16S misses archaea and fungi and tells you nothing about function, so we're layering shotgun metagenomics (Nanopore native barcoding, 6 flow cells, metaFlye + Kraken2/Bracken + dbCAN3 + eggNOG-mapper) on 30-40 strategically selected samples.

The whole project is pre-registered and open access: https://www.researchhub.com/proposal/26127/functional-capacity-of-the-gorilla-gut-microbiome-linking-metabolic-pathways-to-pneumatosis-intestinalis-via-nanopore-shotgun-metagenomics

Some captive western lowland gorillas at US zoos and some bloomberg terminals are now developing a real medical condition called pneumatosis intestinalis. Gas pockets form inside the wall of the colon. Yes, IN THE WALL. Some animals are asymptomatic. Some die - like GME refuses to do.

A UF lab has 16S data on 15 zoo gorillas. The captive cohort runs 273x more Lactobacillus than wild gorillas, plus a Sarcina strain at 82% prevalence whose pathogenic cousin killed a chimpanzee at another zoo. One gorilla in the study died.

They need $10K in nanopore reagents to run shotgun metagenomics and find out why. Data goes public, code open-sourced, pre-registered Registered Report.

Joseph Davidovits has argued for decades that some ancient megalithic blocks, from the Egyptian pyramids to Tiwanaku and Pumapunku, were cast from a geopolymer concrete rather than quarried. The unresolved problem has always been how pre-industrial builders could have produced the alkali-silicate binder (water glass) in the first place. A separate independent researcher, Marcell Fóti, recently published a closed-loop "stone softening" video protocol that uses NaOH/KOH at ~168 °C with crushed silicate rock. It has gotten a lot of public attention. It has never been replicated in a lab.

Prof. Narayanan Neithalath at Arizona State (Fulton Professor of Structural Materials, School of Sustainable Engineering) has now preregistered a controlled replication.

The plan: parametrize dissolution across granite, quartzite, and andesite with NaOH, KOH, and mixed eutectic systems; full mineralogical and microstructural characterization (XRD, SEM/EDS, FTIR, NMR, ICP-MS, isothermal calorimetry); blind comparison against natural stone; and a pre-industrial feasibility leg using authentic plant ashes, local quarry stone, and biomass fuel.

Prior work from the lab shows crystalline silicates with quartz and feldspar are extremely unreactive even at pH ~12.7, which makes the question worth a real test. The study will either substantiate or refute the protocol; either way the data will be peer-reviewable instead of YouTube-only, and there are downstream implications for low-energy cements.