I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

by Ed Yong

Every mammal mother, whether platypus or pangolin, human or hippo, feeds her baby by literally dissolving her own body to make a white fluid that she secretes through her nipples.

Speaking of which, what counts as dysbiosis? How can you tell if an ecosystem is in disarray? A bloom of C. difficile that causes unstoppable diarrhoea is a clear problem, but most other communities are not so easily classified. Is a gut without B. infantis in a state of dysbiosis? If your microbiome has fewer species than a hunter-gatherer’s, is it dysbiotic? The term is great at conveying the ecological nature of disease but it has also become microbiology’s version of art or pornography: hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

And the most wonderful example of this convergence comes from a study of American roller derby players. The players share skin bacteria with their teammates, and different teams have their own distinctive communities. But during a match, as the two teams clash and jostle on the track, their skin microbes temporarily converge. Contact breeds conformity. Sometimes, the long waltz involves hip-checks.14

gutless bone-eating snot-flower worm,

Savage

RePOOPulate.