Microbiome
The Human Collective
21/11/10 21:02 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
The virome in even the feces of identical twins humans vary widely from one another, and from their mothers, in contrast to findings that family members tend to have similar microbiomes. S. pelech points out that the unique resident flora of each person with some 10 trillion bacteria arises from a combination diverse factors, and it largely protects us from pathogenic strains and provide nutrients in a symbiotic relationship. Even within our individual cells, bacterial-like entities known as mitochondria are essential for our good health. Read More...
Learn a Lesson from the Past
03/04/12 12:31 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Ed Yong at Nature News cautioned that while sequencing the human microbiome could lead to exciting and important discoveries for human health, researchers working with the microbiome should avoid overhyping their work so that it does not suffer the same backlash as the Human Genome Project. S. Pelech comments that defining what is meant by the human microbiome "sequence" is even more elusive than the relatively static human genome "sequence" even if this is only from one person out of 7 billion on this planet. He argues that what we really need to do is to identify the specific bacteria that are problematic and cause disease, and differentiate them from the vast majority that are benign or even essential to human health. Read More...