Quotes & Sayings About Microbiome

A biologist with a history of tooth decay invents a symbiotic microbe which lives in the human mouth and feeds by cleaning our teeth. It secreted calcium, which is poisonous to it, controlling its growth and preventing it from eating the teeth themselves. So this guy, he wants to spread the thing to the world, but it'd never fly, FDA and human squeamishness and all, so he becomes a party animal. He throws wild partys at the lab, kisses female grad students, where's, babies. He backwashes in sodas left on tables. He bums drags of cigarettes. He grants humanity eternally clean and healthy teeth but dies of a terrible cocktail of STDs. — James Curcio

The passengers in our microbiome contain at least four million genes, and they work constantly on our behalf: they manufacture vitamins and patrol our guts to prevent infections; they help to form and bolster our immune systems, and digest food. — Michael Specter

The microbiome is the sum of our experiences throughout our lives: the genes we inherited, the drugs we took, the food we ate, the hands we shook. It is unlikely to yield one-size-fits-all solutions to modern maladies. — Anonymous

So, could you hack your microbiome to make yourself healthier, happier, and smarter too? — Anonymous

Breastfeeding is the natural human way of providing exactly that continuous stimulation to the child's developing microbiome and immune system. Partial breastfeeding continued through the first year would ensure a greater likelihood of tolerance, ending the pointless but confusing wrangle over four versus six months as the better age for introduction to other foods. Strong medical advocacy in support of the WHO goal might just be enough to generate the societal re-structuring that would be needed for such breastfeeding to become possible for more than advantaged minorities. — Maureen Minchin

We live in an exciting time. We now know more than ever about our biology and about our history, allowing us to peer into the future with greater clarity than has previously been possible. But at the same time, the changes we are undergoing, brought about by our own advances in technology, medicine, transportation-- and by the growing impact we are having on the world around us-- mean that we live in a time in which the future looks increasingly less like the past. We have become an odd species, indeed, but our story is not yet over. Like all species, Homo sapiens continues to evolve, so there is one thing we can say with certainty: the people of tomorrow will not be the same as the people of today. — Scott Solomon

We are well on our way to a unified theory of biology that will merge body and environment, brain and mind, genome and microbiome. — Deepak Chopra

these kits can be useful for gauging the diversity and general composition of your microbiome. — David Perlmutter

The story emerging from these studies is not yet complete, but it has already led to fascinating insights. Thanks to its microbes, a baby can better digest its mother's milk. And your ability to digest carbohydrates relies to a significant extent on enzymes that can be made only by genes present not in you but in your microbiome. — John Brockman