viernes, 6 de noviembre de 2009

Our overflowing orifices...

[Edit: 'dead' image removed but this info still linked.] Not only one's orifices, everything; although many strongly prefer the oily sites that our orifices provide. I'm on about our bacterial populations (hopefully you realised!). We're covered in trillions of different microbes, diverse populations; the University of Colorado at Boulder has developed the first 'atlas of bacterial diversity across the human body'; interestingly this diversity "Shows Wide Interpersonal Differences" [Link

We know from a previous skin map that armpits "Are 'Rain Forests' for Bacteria" [NGN] so I guess it's logical that each human "continent" would have diverse populations albeit with some similarities. Or, as Julia Segre (National Human Genome Research Institute) said about the skin map, "The bacteria in my underarm are more similar to those in your underarm than they are to those on my forearm". Nice. And don't forget either that we are not as human as we think: for every hundred cells in your body, 99 are bacteria. The new 'atlas' work - according to the lead researcher Dr Rob Knight - is "the most complete view we have yet of the microbial side of ourselves, one that our group and others will be adding to over the coming years...

...The goal is to find out what is normal for a healthy person, which will provide a baseline for further studies to look at people with diseased states."

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