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

by Ed Yong

there are more bacteria in your gut than there are stars in our galaxy.

archaea are as different from bacteria in biochemistry as PCs are from Macs in operating systems.

There’s a huge void between the simpler cells of bacteria and archaea and the more complex ones of eukaryotes, and life has managed to cross that void exactly once in four billion years.

There are fewer than 100 species of bacteria that cause infectious diseases in humans;

When microbiologists first started cataloguing the human microbiome in its entirety they hoped to discover a “core” microbiome: a group of species that everyone shares. It’s now debatable if that core exists.18