At Washington University in St. Louis, researchers have found that humans' ability to survive starvation may depend on the kinds of bacteria living in their guts. They deduced this by feeding poop and peanut butter to mice.
How about I back up a little.
If you haven't heard, the hot new field in biology is the "microbiome." There's even a Human Microbiome Project, started in 2008. It's reminiscent of the Human Genome Project, which pushed through the 1990s and early 2000s to complete a sequence of the human genome. But the microbiome isn't made of human DNA, or human anything. It's the collection of bacteria and other microorganisms that live inside us. And it's starting to seem pretty important.
Your microbiome is not an everyday cold or patch of infection. It's the Alamo. For every single cell in your body, there are 10 microbial cells. Yes, in your body. The ...
