The research to come will ultimately yield not just detailed microbial maps of humanity but also a kind of microbial GPS\u2014a guiding body of knowledge that will tell us where we are, as well as where we want to go and how to get there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The Science (and Art) of Microbiome Mapping If what you hear about the microbiome can seem qualified or contradictory, it\u2019s because this isn\u2019t exactly rocket science\u2014I\u2019d submit it\u2019s much harder. One of our biggest challenges is just figuring out what we\u2019re looking at. In terms of DNA, humans are essentially identical. But at the microbial level, our similarities diverge quickly. The same body part on two people will often harbor very different microbial species (and even when we share species, their total populations may vary widely).<\/p>
Choose two people at random and examine a single microbial cell from the first person\u2019s stool, and then the second person\u2019s. Only about 10 percent of the time will you find a cell of the same species in both people\u2019s stool. In contrast, if you picked a position on the human genome from those same two people, their DNA would match 99.9 percent of the time. Not only is our microbial genome much more diverse than our human genome, the actual types of microbes differ vastly from person to person as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It gets more complicated when we begin to define what actually constitutes a unique microbial species. For animals, it\u2019s relatively easy: if two animals can interbreed and produce offspring who are themselves fertile, they are, by definition, from the same species. But microbes don\u2019t usually have sex. And when they do, they can exchange genetic material outside their species\u2014so wildly outside it that, for example, bacteria have been shown to exchange with other bacteria, archaea, and even eukaryotes and viruses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
These highlights are from the Kindle version of Follow Your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":15162,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"yoast_head":"\n
"Follow Your Gut" Highlights<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n