In the article "Mapping the Great Indoors," Peter Andrey Smith writes about scientists' efforts to map the microbial biodiversity living in our homes and buildings.
Billions of microbial cells live in the guts of humans and other animals.
Edaphic factors have been described as those soil conditions and properties that affect the fauna, flora and microbial organisms living in a particular rootzone, rhizosphere, or even landscape.
In biofilm, microbial cells live in a customized micro-niche in a complex microbial homeostatically stable community having a firm metabolic cooperation, which renders ecologically different characters to the microbes (Costerton et al. 1995).
A network of research activities was established in frame of national and international programs to elucidate the interaction of the beneficial bacterium with plants, plant pathogens, and the microbial community living on plant roots.
In 2007, the United States government launched a five-year, $157 million Human Microbiome Project, aimed at sequencing the genomes of microbial populations living in the mouths, guts, armpits and other orifices of 300 healthy Americans.
Microbial populations live in the surface water, with aerobic species congregating near the water surface and anaerobic microbes increasing with depth due to the decrease in oxygen levels and to the reduced conditions.
Complicating the picture is the fact that before being diagnosed with IBD, patients often receive antibiotics to fend off a supposed gut infection that could be causing the symptoms, which also have a powerful impact on the microbial populations living in our guts.
The NIH's Human Microbiome Project is ambitiously aiming to characterize the microbial communities living in us.
You may have more than 100 different microbial species living in your mouth alone at this very moment.
