There have been many scientific discoveries:
On January 9th, 2018: The symbiotic bacteria living within the Chilean cicada genus Tettigades have some of the smallest genomes known of any life form. According to a new study, the microbes have lost up to 97 percent of their genes over the course of the past 70 million years, as well as the capability to inhabit any other kind of host.
On December 5th, 2017: Typical microbe studies take a sample of tissue, blend it up, and sequence the population’s genetic material to see which organisms are present. Such studies can inform scientists about what species reside at a particular body site, but not how their communities are organized in space. A lab at the Forsyth Institute is working to fill in that gap, mapping out microbial neighborhoods in various tissues.