Initiative waives human life in favour of life on humans

摘要

Microbe experts from around the world are setting up a formal collaboration to study the organisms that live in and on humans. The International Human Microbiome Consortium, announced on 16 October, involves geneticists and bacteriologists from more than a dozen countries. The researchers will look at the role of the microbiome - the microorganisms that dwell in and on the body and that vastly outnumber the body's own cells - in health and disease. The consortium's two most prominent projects are a five-year initiative funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to genetically sequence microbes living in the mouth, skin, nose, vagina and faeces; and a four-year, European Commission scheme to analyse the gut flora of people living in Spain and Denmark to find microbial links to obesity and inflammatory bowel disease.