查看文章

Entropic age concept suggests that, in the long-term, metabolic heat damages the living systems and causes ageing. Human host, plus millions of microorganisms living in and on it are called the 'human superorganism'. Gut microbiota acts as an autonomous thermodynamic subsystem in the human superorganism, generate and export its own entropy without causing ageing damage to the host. Thermodynamic analyses are performed to quantify entropy generation by the host and the gut microbiota subsystems, and it is found that 12% to 59% of the metabolic entropy of the human superorganism is generated by the gut microbiota and exported with faeces, without contributing to the ageing of the host. Although gut microbiota was used to be studied traditionally only for their nutritional benefits to the host, this is a newly hypothesised benefit and needs to be studied further.