NIH Launches Human Microbiome Project

The NIH began funding the Human Microbiome Project, a project dedicated to analyzing foreign microorganisms in the human body. It is known that microorganisms roughly account for two pounds of weight it a grown adult, and they might outnumber the number of human cells, but little is known about their role in human functioning and pathology. A good balance of these organisms are maintained in a healthy human being, but overproliferation of these organisms are implicated in several diseases, including diabetes, final stages of AIDS, asthema, and mortality with burn victims.

The project will begin with sequencing the genomes of these organisms, and then taking samples from diseased and non-diseased patients. Accordingly, the first four centers to receive funding were sequencing centers. The NIH hopes to eventually spend $115 million on the project.

I find the article interesting because I had no idea that these microorganisms could outnumber the number of my own cells in my body. It is sort of unsettling that the majority of me is not, well, me. At the same time, the human body is the perfect breeding ground for bacteria, and the immune system can not be expected to eliminate every single "non-self" it encounters.

http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/dec2007/od-19.htm