Microbes All Around

In the New York Times, Carl Zimmer writes about the human microbiome and its role in disease. He begins the piece by describing a fecal transplant that treated a patient's Clostridium difficile infection in her gut. In addition, Zimmer describes the microbiome project being led by the University of Washington in St. Louis' George Weinstock that is studying all the bacteria found in humans as well as the recent findings that babies delivered by Caesarean section are colonized mostly by bacteria found on adult human skin and that mice without a microbiome can't make IL-10, which helps reduce inflammation. "Surrounding us and infusing us is this cloud of microbes," says WashU's Jeffrey Gordon.