more microbes than cells in our bodies ??!

Today I walked a bit with ALR downtown. We stopped at one bus station... when a woman was quite curious.. but a little nervous about my size. ALR asked... "Do you want to say Hello"... the woman was nervous so I put on my best calmest, non-confrontational no eye contact, non-committal stance. And slowly she warmed to me, and slowly let me even investigate her face with a light purple lipstick and purple eye shadow to accentuate her lovely black skin.

This week in Nature "Insights into the phylogeny and coding potential of microbial dark matter", Rinke et al., sequenced about 200 single-cell genomes of 29 major and mostly uncharacterized branches in the Tree of Life.  But more interesting to me - sorry Rinke et al.. - was the National Public Radio  discussion of our personal microbiome.   You see, I am aware that in humans.. there are more microbes on your body than cells in your body, and well...  if you look after you personal microbial family, like I look after all my friends and people, and my person, ALR, then we will all be healthier.  When I was young, I was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease.   I think we're still not clear if it was an extreme infestation of Clostridium difficile or my microbiome showing an allergic response to something... like stress..  Now ALR's PhD thesis was on a nicer microbe called Clostridium acetobutylicum, so she knows something about this obligate anaerobic group of Bacteria, but she also understands how allergies or stress can imbalance the microbial ecosystem of our bodies. And together over the years she and I have managed whatever microbial imbalance I was born with. I clearly don't do well with grains, although I love chicken, any amounts will set the bowels moving... so ALR makes me eat only certain things, unless I sneak in something here or there. I do love vegetables. Broccoli, brussel sprouts, berries, apples.. cherries, oranges, bananas... so maybe in some past life I was a vegan.

So on this matter of the microbiome...  let me tell you about another recent paper in Nature. magazine. . "Antibiotic treatment expands the resistance reservoir and ecological network of the phage metagenome", Modi et al. July 11 2013, Nature. 499:219
Ok.. later. I need to sniff here a bit. more interesting for now. May be some dog who has no good intentions!