NEW DATA ON MOLECULAR GENETICS OF BRAVO
20th April 2019
In the process of carrying advanced research on our products, we conducted an extremely detailed analysis of the microbial composition of Bravo using a novel tool that exploits the most advanced concepts of molecular genetics.
We used a unique Microbiome Array that can detect up to 12,000 different microbes with extremely high specificity and sensitivity.
After having performed this advanced genetic analysis, we can state that in our Bravo products, and, in particular, in its proprietary cultured kefir grain component, there are more than 300 (three hundred) different microbes, the highest number ever recorded in a probiotic.
These new results go well above and beyond our most optimistic expectations; using the tools of classic microbiology, we had known for years that we had scores of different microbes, but the Microbiome Array revealed a richness in biodiversity that we could not anticipate. This is due to the fact that the tools of classic microbiology (the assays commonly used to assess the composition of a product as described in its label) are unable to distinguish the sub-strains, the plasmids and the phages (see later) that only the Microbiome Array can demonstrate.
Most of these newly identified microbes are comprised in the Bravo proprietary "cultured kefir grains" component indicated in the label and, for this reason, there is no requirement to list them individually.
I am sure you realize that these results put Bravo in a completely different league, or better, in a league of its own since no other probiotic can honestly make such a claim. This is because Bravo, at variance with all other probiotics in the market, was designed since its inception as a means to reproduce the complexity of the healthy human microbiota.
However, it is not the sheer number of different microbes (more than 300) that is utterly impressive, but rather the biodiversity of its proprietary cultured kefir grain component that makes Bravo even more unique. The genetic analysis revealed that Bravo, in addition to probiotic microbes, contains a great number of plasmids and phages.
Plasmids are self-replicating small DNA molecules that carry genes that benefit the survival of the organism and can be transferred to other living beings. Bravo not only contains a very high number of live probiotic microbes; thanks to the presence of plasmids, the probiotic microbes in Bravo are also able to communicate with each other and with the cells of the human body with mutual reciprocal benefits.
Thanks to the presence of plasmids, we can say that Bravo not only contains an incredibly high number of live probiotic microbes, but also that these microbes are able to talk to each other and to our human cells. No other probiotic can make this claim.
However, even more interesting could be, for its ramifications, the presence of phages.
Phages are the microbes that colonize the microbes; they can also be defined "the microbiota of the microbiota". The study of phages and how they relate to human health represents one of the frontiers of molecular medicine.
Phages are the most abundant organisms in the biosphere and have been of interest to scientists as tools to understand fundamental molecular biology, as vectors of horizontal gene transfer and drivers of evolution, as sources of diagnostic and genetic tools and as novel therapeutic agents.
Phages impact immunity directly, in ways that are typically anti-inflammatory. Phages modulate innate immunity via phagocytosis and cytokine responses, but also impact adaptive immunity via effects on antibody production and effector polarization. Phages may thereby have profound effects on fighting of bacterial infections or cancer growth by modulating the immune response.
Thanks to the presence of phages, we can now explain all the almost incredible results that you and we have seen with Bravo.
In Bravo, probiotic microbes live together with plasmids and phages in a complex network of communication, a symbiosis that is reminiscent of the origin of life on Earth.
As you may know, we live in a microbial driven world that only exists because bacteria and Archaea tempered the previously hostile environment on early Earth to create atmospheric conditions that allow eukaryotic life forms such as humans to flourish; it has now become evident that phages were, and still are, responsible for wellbeing of microbes, which themselves impact environments at large.
In other words, if it were not for the phages - the microbes of the microbes - life would not exist, and this is why they are so important for our wellbeing and the wellbeing of the environment.
I hope that these notes of mine are helpful for your efforts to further highlight the unique properties of Bravo.
Molecular Biologist, Dr Marco Ruggiero, MD. Ph.D.,
Silver Spring Sagl. [email protected]