Since we are covered (inside and out) with microscopic life which in many cases help us to live, such as in our gut, is it still possible for a human being to survive without a microbiome? It wouldn’t be possible to create a human lacking one in the presence of life on Earth obviously, but if a space craft was perfectly decontaminated and contained a human zygote with everything necessary to bring it to term in an artificial womb and then be ‘born’ (plus robotic care etc etc), could that human survive in a biological sense? Would it just require a specific diet to get around the lack of digestive assistance?
In: Biology
Depending on what you eat, yes. However, you may suffer from substantial gastrointestinal issues due to certain foods not being broken down properly during digestions. You could, of course, be fed intravenously and bypass the digestive tract entirely in order to avoid those issues. But intravenous feeding has a lot more complications and could cause a number of issues (like elevated blood sugars) if it is not done properly.
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