Discussion of Food, Sex, travel paper

III. Because without microbes we would not be here here. There are more microbial cells in your body than human cells. Many (most?) help us with: Digestion Protect from pathogens Interact with nervous system Without microbes, we would not be here.

Human microbiome project 4,788 specimens from 242 screened and phenotyped adults1 (129 males, 113 females)  Healthy adults Several body sites Methods? Interested? Look here! https://commonfund.nih.gov/hmp/overview

Diversity of the human microbiome is concordant among measures, unique to each individual, and strongly determined by microbial habitat. Within-subject variation over time was consistently lower than between-subject variation, both in organismal composition and in metabolic function (Fig. 1d). The uniqueness of each individual’s microbial community thus seems to be stable over time (relative to the population as a whole), which may be another feature of the human microbiome specifically associated with health.  Alpha diversity within subjects by body habitat, grouped by area, as measured using the relative inverse Simpson index of genus-level phylotypes (cyan), 16S rRNA gene OTUs (blue), shotgun metagenomic reads matched to reference genomes (orange), functional modules (dark orange), and enzyme families (yellow). The mouth generally shows high within-subject diversity and the vagina low diversity, with other habitats intermediate; variation among individuals often exceeds variation among body habitats. b, Bray–Curtis beta diversity among subjects by body habitat, colours as for a. Skin differs most between subjects, with oral habitats and vaginal genera more stable. Although alpha- and beta-diversity are not directly comparable, changes in structure among communities (a) occupy a wider dynamic range than do changes within communities among individuals (b). c, Principal coordinates plot showing variation among samples demonstrates that primary clustering is by body area, with the oral, gastrointestinal, skin and urogenital habitats separate; the nares habitat bridges oral and skin habitats. d, Repeated samples from the same subject (blue) are more similar than microbiomes from different subjects (red). Technical replicates (grey) are in turn more similar; these patterns are consistent for all body habitats and for both phylogenetic and metabolic community composition. See previously described sample counts1 for all comparisons. C Huttenhower et al. Nature 486, 207-214 (2012) doi:10.1038/nature11234

Carriage of microbial taxa varies while metabolic pathways remain stable within a healthy population. a, b, Vertical bars represent microbiome samples by body habitat in the seven locations with both shotgun and 16S data; bars indicate relative abundances colored by microbial phyla from binned OTUs (a) and metabolic modules (b). Legend indicates most abundant phyla/pathways by average within one or more body habitats; RC, retroauricular crease. A plurality of most communities’ memberships consists of a single dominant phylum (and often genus; seeSupplementary Fig. 2), but this is universal neither to all body habitats nor to all individuals. Conversely, most metabolic pathways are evenly distributed and prevalent across both individuals and body habitats. C Huttenhower et al. Nature 486, 207-214 (2012) doi:10.1038/nature11234

Why do you think they got these results? Food Sex Travel

You’re surrounded by your own personal cloud of microbes 22 September 2015 7:00 am We leave traces of bacteria on everything we touch—SkyMall catalogs, elevator buttons, the office coffee pot—but physical contact isn’t the only way to make a microbial mark. Humans unknowingly shed swarms of bacteria that linger in the space around them, creating a “microbial cloud.” Now, new research published online today in PeerJ, reveals that the clouds of airborne bacteria may be entirely unique to each person, like a microbial fingerprint. To reach this conclusion, the scientists ran two experiments in which they placed participants in a sanitized room and surrounded them with rings of petri dishes and suspended air filters to catch floating microbes. They compared the captured samples with the microbes of a humanless, but otherwise identical room, and showed that the two spaces were microbially distinct. This provoked another question: If a person’s microbial cloud can set two rooms apart, can it set two people apart? For six of the eight participants, the answer was yes. The researchers sequenced the microbial cloud samples and saw that many of the participants had the same bacteria in their clouds, but in different concentrations. Although they’re not entirely sure how far an individual’s microbial fog extends, the team estimates that our microbes float within a 90 centimeter radius—meaning that in any semicrowded space (a subway, grocery store lines, or the morning meeting at your office) there’s a high chance our microbes are mingling, as shown in the image above. Researchers speculate that when microbes mix, humans may take bacterial souvenirs from one another, a potential contributor to how we develop our individual microbiomes. Science| DOI: 10.1126/science.aad1792

Does disruption of the human microbiome cause: Depression? Obesity? Krohn’s disease? Cavities? Parkinson’s? Vaginosis? Allergies?

Alternative careers in microbiology

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3328685-looking-for-value-in-the-oil-patch-try-the-value-chain

You can solve these problems through a career in microbiology Microbes make plastics Microbes make biofuels Methane Ethanol Hydrogen Microbes do wastewater treatment (has greater impact on human health than medicine) Craft breweries: more than 6 million barrels per year, over 100,000 people and generated sales of over $10 billion in 2012

Places where you can do research in microbiology Universities – practically any of them, particularly large ones Biotech labs Medical labs – help diagnose diseases as a medical lab tech! Pacific Northwest national labs – Richland WA Other?