MICROBES OER MEDICINE.doc

MICROBES OVER MEDICINE? MAY 6, 2014?PAM LINCEZ 3 COMMENTS You’ve heard it before- “you are what you eat”- but generally in the context of avoiding the McGrets, putting the double cheeseburger down, and choosing to munch on fruits and veggies to be a better, healthier you. Bet your last french fry you’ve never considered what you’re eating today has the ability to change the community of trillions of microorganisms?(aka micro-sized bugs including bacteria, viruses and fungi) that live in your gut and even in the plaque coating of your teeth. From James Hamblin?post, picture originating from the Atlantic Monthly, February 1922 For over a decade, the collection of microbes living on and in your body- the human microbiome- has been the rage in Science.? As you can see from the following picture Image from Costello et al. Science, December 18 2009, Supplemental Online Material.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/content/326/5960/1694/suppl/DC1 microbes are everywhere. In fact, they out number your human cells 10 to 1. Basically, you are a very small percentage human and a large percentage microbe. Now if you’re living that close to your neighbors, where you’re literally sharing oral and armpit cavities, it’s probably best to know what you’re up against. Close encounters of the microbe kind have sparked the interest of scientists across the world inspiring national and global collaborative projects investigating the identities and actions of our resident microbiome and their effects on our health. In 2008, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched theHuman Microbiome Project (HMP)- a $115 million funded initiative to extend the Human Genome Project to the exploration, characterization and sequencing of the genomes of the human microbiome. In the same year, the study of the human microbiome went global with the launch of the?International Human Microbiome Consortium (IHMC). The IHMC brings large-scale genomics projects from the EU, China, Japan, Singapore, Korea, West Africa,