Want to share microbial profiles?

A research group in Europe is looking for participants in a microbial gut profiling study. One of their side enticements is that they will - if you want - put you in contact via social networking with other people worldwide who share your microbial profile. Sounds weird but really I think this is brilliant. Gut microbes impact us in ways that we don't fully understand yet. There may be many other people who have figured out good balance with their microbes that you can learn from. OK, that still sounds weird, but cool in a sciency way

http://my.microbes.eu/

Here's the more sensationalized interpretation....
http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/new-social-network-matches-people-based-on-gut-bacteria

Long term diet affects your gut microbe composition

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/08/31/science.1208344

the food you eat acts very much like an enrichment disturbance to your gut microbes!

tidbits from the metagenome

tidbits from June'11 issue of Microbe

- "metagenomic analysis suggests fourth domain within tree of life"

- gut microbiome contains 3.3 million genes!! Humans have ~20-30K so as the article points out human genes account for less that 1% of the gene types that are active in the body.