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10 results

  • 8 - Altruism and Sexual Selection

  • from Part IV - Sexual Selection and Morality
  • Edited by Filomena de Sousa, Gonzalo Munévar
  • Book: Sex, Reproduction and Darwinism
  • Published by: Pickering & Chatto
  • Published online: 05 December 2014, pp 127-140

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The central idea of evolutionary ethics is that human morality – including both moral sense and moral codes – can be explained in similar adaptive terms. Human beings have the morality they do because, through the process of evolutionary adaptation, such a morality enhances survival and reproduction of human groups.

    Moral ability is a necessary consequence of our biological evolution. Human beings are ethical beings because of their biological nature, which makes them capable of judging their own behaviour as either good or evil, moral or immoral. This is a consequence of a characteristically human intellectual ability that includes self-awareness, symbolic language and abstract thought. These intellectual abilities emerge as a result of an evolutionary process similar to those of closely related primate species, but they have definitively acquired a specifically human character.

    In a well-known section of his Descent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin grounded the capacity to behave in a moral manner on a uniquely human feature: the moral sense. He believed that this trait distinguished human beings from other living animals, though some, such as other primates, would exhibit it if their capacities could develop enough.

    In the ethical naturalism inaugurated by Darwin, this notion of a moral sense linked morality to human nature. However, the specific mechanisms underlying the alleged moral sense were unclear. Darwin suggested that it emerged from the addition of sympathetic – i.e., emotive – impulses and the specifically human ability to reflect upon the consequences of our acts.

  • Immunostimulatory effect of faecal Bifidobacterium species of breast-fed and formula-fed infants in a peripheral blood mononuclear cell/Caco-2 co-culture system

  • T. Pozo-Rubio, J. R. Mujico, A. Marcos, E. Puertollano, I. Nadal, Y. Sanz, E. Nova
  • Journal: British Journal of Nutrition / Volume 106 / Issue 8 / 28 October 2011
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 May 2011, pp. 1216-1223
  • Print publication: 28 October 2011
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  • Bifidobacterium spp. typical of the human intestinal microbiota are believed to influence the balance of immune responses in the intestinal mucosa. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of different bifidobacterial species and their mixtures in in vitro experiments with peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and Caco-2 cells. Bifidobacterium adolescentis, B. angulatum, B. breve, B. catenulatum, B. infantis, B. longum and two combinations of these bifidobacteria simulating the species composition found in faecal samples from breast-fed (BF) and formula-fed (FF) infants were used. The levels of several cytokines were measured by direct stimulation of PBMC and by stimulation of a Caco-2/PBMC co-culture with bifidobacteria. B. catenulatum and B. breve were the strongest enhancers of interferon-γ (IFN-γ) production by direct stimulation of PBMC. B. longum was the highest inducer of IL-10 and the lowest TNF-α stimulus. In the Caco-2/PBMC system, B. breve was the highest inducer of IL-8 production by Caco-2 cells, significantly different from B. infantis, B. adolescentis and the FF mixture (P < 0·05). IFN-γ produced by PBMC stimulated with the BF mixture (containing 22 % B. breve, compared with 7 % in the FF mixture) was significantly higher compared with B. adolescentis, B. infantis and B. longum. B. adolescentis also inhibited IFN-γ production compared with the FF mixture and B. longum. The proportion of different Bifidobacterium strains seems to be an important determinant of the cytokine balance in the simulated intestinal environment studied. B. breve and the combination of the Bifidobacterium species typically found in the microbiota of BF infants have shown the most significant effects.