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- Oct 13, 2010
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...if you count number of cells. Bacterial cells in and on us outnumber human cells by far.
There's a study that is in an area of science that I think is the start of "something big" in understanding human health: understanding the human microbiota.
The BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado has released preliminary results from over six thousand people that donated $99 each. That paper compares the crowd-sourced study (AGP-American Gut Project) a government study costing $173 million (HMP-Human Microbiome Project). The biggest take-away for me was just how different each of our microbiomes are.
If you want to join other citizen scientists you can go to this link. But don't be in any hurry to see how your microbiome compares to other people of your age, weight, diet, etc...it might take 6 months to get your data back.
Does anyone here think like I do that some disease processes will be discovered based on this research? For instance, maybe having a certain set of strains of bacteria generate a carcinogenic substance. Treatment could be to consume something that absorbes the substance or instead, maybe a probiotic could be introduced that crowds-out the bad actors.
There's a study that is in an area of science that I think is the start of "something big" in understanding human health: understanding the human microbiota.
The BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado has released preliminary results from over six thousand people that donated $99 each. That paper compares the crowd-sourced study (AGP-American Gut Project) a government study costing $173 million (HMP-Human Microbiome Project). The biggest take-away for me was just how different each of our microbiomes are.
The gut is a complex ecosystem, far more like a rainforest than a desert. Additionally, every person has a different mix of microbes in their gut. Therefore, to truly understand how many kinds of microbes there are, we have to sample many people. The AGP has sampled many more people than any other project, including the HMP. Therefore, for the types of people that participate in the AGP, we understand the range of kinds of microbes that exist. Now we just need to understand why and what factors affect them.
If you want to join other citizen scientists you can go to this link. But don't be in any hurry to see how your microbiome compares to other people of your age, weight, diet, etc...it might take 6 months to get your data back.
Does anyone here think like I do that some disease processes will be discovered based on this research? For instance, maybe having a certain set of strains of bacteria generate a carcinogenic substance. Treatment could be to consume something that absorbes the substance or instead, maybe a probiotic could be introduced that crowds-out the bad actors.
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