Science Market Update

Remember the character of Pigpen in the comic strip Peanuts? He walked around within a cloud of dust and dirt. Well, according to University of California Davis microbiologist Jonathan Eisen, we all live within our own aura of microbes --10 times as many microbial cells as human cells!--and that's probably a very good thing for our health. It sounds counterintuitive at first, but not all microbes are bad. We've come to realize intestinal biota are good for digestion and colon health (among other things), but the outside of our bodies is also host to vast colonies of microbes that are increasingly proving to be vital cohorts of our immune system.

We're finding out that there's a lot more to malnutrition among infants and children than just not getting enough to eat, or enough high-quality food. Individuals may develop malnutrition as a result of what is or isn't growing in their gut, where food gets processed. It's a fascinating insight with significant implications for treating a deadly world problem. In addition to getting sufficient good food, malnutrition could be addressed with novel dietary and microbial therapeutics, effectively optimizing a person's ability to draw nutrients and calories from the food and drink they take in, as well as making sure the immune system is being supported rather than compromised in the process.

If you're in a modern building with an HVAC system, you probably think of it as a controlled environment: air, relatively clean, either warm or cold depending on the setting, is pumped in for your respiratory benefit.  Yet hospitals and schools are some of the worst places to go if you don't want to get sick, even if you never touch a single surface.  That's because the air is full of trillions of microbes, and buildings (any buildings) host their own complex ecosystems which we're just now starting to study.  Researchers in this relatively new field include biologists as well as architects who are working together to understand the "built environment microbiome."  The University of Oregon's BIOBE Center (Biology and the Built Environment) is a hub for this research into what makes a building good for human health, or not.