September 6th, 2012 The Human Microbiome - the big news in biology

It seems that your health and well being, and very a big part of what makes you you, is a big bunch of live cells (2 to 5 lbs worth) in and on your body that are distinctly non-human.

Some of the recent news stories on this topic:

• Technology Review - researchers catalog microbial zoo
• The Economist - the human microbiome - me, myself, us
• The New York Times - tending the body's microbial garden
• The Economist - hardening arteries may be the evildoing of gut flora (4-13-2013)

Highlights from such articles:

• your microbiome cells outnumber your human cells by a factor of 10
• there are 100 times as many genes in your microbiome as there are in the human genome
• some of our microbiomes agents do good things for us:  breakdown of otherwise indigestible food; syntheses of useful vitamins; defense against many diseases; keeping bad microbes at bay
• our microbiomes can promote some diseases
• our microbiomes can be killed off by the antibiotics we take
• our microbiomes can be swapped and shared - they are communicable
• as humans evolve so does the human microbiome (or maybe, its more the other way around.. ) 

Sure, some of the above is not news - we've known of the existence of enteric bacteria (gut flora) for over 100 years. But most of what we now know about the microbiome we have learned in just last year or two (see Human Microbiome Project).  And it looks like the our microbiome's importance to our daily well being could be the biggest thing since sliced atoms..

Some biologists now believe the reason we have an appendix is to retain and help preserve a seeding of gut flora. In other words, in the history of our species the gut flora portion of the human microbiome proved so important to our survival that we evolved an organ specifically for the purpose of mothering it.

Take a look at this article which talks of a study concerning sinus infections, the diversity of the microbes living in our sinuses and how these often hugely impact our health:  sinusitis-linked-to-microbial-diversity.

It's my bet that what we learn about the human microbiome will revolutionize medicine in the next 5 to 10 years.

For some speculative reading on the "little mothers" (the microbes that live in our guts) check out Greg Bear's novel Vitals.