Say Hello To Your Littlest Friends — The Microbiota
By Laurelle Turner
You are a universe. You contain multitudes. Inside you, all over you exist swarming, blooming, mostly harmonious bacteria, fungi, and viruses. We call them microbiota and they compose the microbiome. Hardworking microbiologists have at last painted a mind-blowing portrait of these, our personal ecosystems. Turns out, our residential bugs are role players in just about everything. Entities typically associated with infections and epidemics function around the clock to keep us in equilibrium. What we feed them directly affects our immune systems, mental balances, and perhaps even the metabolic health of our grandchildren.
The human microbiome is en vogue today. Several hundred papers have been dedicated to exploring the effects and consequences of microbiota. And that’s if we count only what’s been published since January 2018 by Nature. The number will likely grow.
One of the more popular tools for studying the microbiome is the growing world of bioinformatics — collecting and analyzing large amounts of biological data for the purpose of drawing accurate conclusions about the human condition. Bioinformatics is the ultimate mash-up between biology and data science and it has become entirely necessary because our biology is chock full of an overwhelming amount of information about our health.
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