Human cells makeup only 43% of the body's total cell count.
The rest are microscopic colonist.
Understanding this hidden half - our microbiome - is rapidly transforming our understanding,
of diseases from allergy to Parkinson's.
No matter how well you wash, nearly every nook and cranny of our body,
is covered in microscopic organisms.
This includes bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea.
The greatest consideration of these organisms are in the intestines.
We are more microbe than human.
The full set of active genes in the body is about 20,000.
If we add all the genes in the microbiome, it is around 2 to 20 million microbial genes.
The genes of a microbiome are essentially a second genome, which augment the activity of our own genome.
What makes us human is our DNA plus the DNA of our gut microbes.
Scientists are discovering the role, the microbiome plays in digestion,
regulating the immune system, protecting against disease, and manufacture of vital vitamins.
These tiny creatures transform our health in ways which we never imagined until recently.
It is a new way of thinking about the microbial world.
Till date our relationship with microbes has largely been one of warfare.
Antibiotics and vaccine have been the weapons unleashed against disease like small pox, TB etc..
This has saved a large number of lives.
Some researches are concerned that our assault against harmful microorganisms,
has done untold damage to our good bacteria.
In the last fifteen years we have done a terrific job of eliminating infectious diseases.
But we have seen a enormous increase in autoimmune disease and in allergy.
The success we have had in fighting pathogens, have now contributed to a whole set of new diseases,
that we have to deal with.
The microbiome seems to be related to a wide range of illness, like depression, Parkinson's, autism and obesity.
A type of microbiome in the gut could be one factor that leads to obesity.
Scientists have experimented by taking microbiome of lean and obese humans,
and transplanting them into mice.
The mice got thinner or fatter depending on whose microbiome they got.
It is possible that microbes could be a new form of medicine.
Scientists are studying the microbiome of people who are healthy,
and people who are ill.
There is some evidence that repairing someone's microbiome,
could actually lead to remission of certain types of diseases.
Microbial medicine is in the early stages.
Some researchers think that monitoring our microbiome will become a daily event.
It will provide a gold mine of information about our health.
In the future our washrooms could have the equipment to analyse our microbiome.