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Philanthropy For Basic Science:
Microbiomes THE HUMAN BODY – with all the microbial organisms that live in it and on it – can be considered an ecological unit, termed the “microbiome.” This term was coined by Dr. Joshua Lederberg, the Nobel Prize winning biologist who chairs The Ellison Medical Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board. The human body, Dr. Lederberg says, should be considered “a superorganism with an extended genome that includes not only its own cells but also the fluctuating microbial genome set of bacteria and viruses that share that body space.”It has been estimated that the human body carries more microbial cells than it does human cells. Many of these microbes, however, have not been cultivated or characterized. Some of these unknown or poorly characterized microbes probably play critical roles in maintaining human health, and the interplay among pathogenic and nonpathogenic microbes, both transient and permanent members of our microflora, is likely to exert an important influence on disease. As Dr. Lederberg has written, “We need more research, not only on how bacteria are virulent, but how they withhold their virulence and moderate their attacks. We need to investigate how our microbiome flora – the ones that we live with all the time –don’t cause disease and instead protect us against their competitors.”
Articles related to Microbiomes Exploring Microbial Communities
"If we ask what makes a health-associated ecosystem function, we might find ways to maintain health and also to treat people with disease — but with the goal of restoring health-associated communities, rather than eliminating a cause of disease."
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