EXPLORING THE HUMAN ECOSYSTEM
Our bodies are covered and filled with microbes, and we’re only just beginning to understand how vital they are in keeping us alive
WORDS ZOE CORMIER
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Dwelling in every nook of your body, from the lining of your gut,
the surface of your skin, every crevice of your mouth and even
on the surface of your eye, are billions and billions of bacteria – 100 trillion in all. In fact, for every single ‘you’ cell, your body carries ten bacterial cells. So depending on how you think about it, you are 90 per cent bacteria. This means we’re all ecosystems rather than individuals.
But these bacteria aren’t invasive freeloaders. Although we’re programmed from childhood to think of ‘germs’ as nefarious invaders, deliverers of disease and decay, your microbial tenants are in fact good for you. Without them you wouldn’t be able to digest food, fight infections or survive at all. They pay rent for taking up residence in and on your warm, welcoming body by carrying out vital biological services that ensure that you – their home – stays alive.
You need them, and they need you. Welcome to the strange, preconception-challenging and almost entirely uncharted world of the microscopic ecosystem that calls you home – the microbiome.
Although biologists have long known that we’re home to beneficial microbes, until recently we knew very little about them: how many species call us home, what they do and how they tend to vary from person to person. Now we are starting to glimpse the full array of species that we carry and
how they play their part in making us who we are.
“For years lots of things were poorly understood. We’re starting to understand why we carry huge numbers of organisms”
DID YOU KNOW? There are typically 40 million bacteria in one gram of soil
Staphylococcus aureus
is a microbe many of us carry