microbiome 1

As we explained in one of the first posts on this blog, the American  National Institutesof Health (NIH) launched a five-year initiative in 2008 aimed at studying the ins and outs of the human microbiome to “characterize microbial communities found at multiple human body sites and look for correlations between changes in the microbiome and human health”.

Today, we’d like to share with you an excellent infographic created by the Science communications specialist and artist Perrin Ireland and published in Wags Revue. The illustrations provide us with the opportunity to learn about the main issues analyzed by the Human Microbiome Project and some of its main findings.

As well as understanding how the bacterial communities that accompany us from birth develop, these excellent illustrations provide us with interesting information, such as how half an adult’s stool is not leftover food, but rather microbial biomass.

“Humans are like corals, an assemblage of life forms living together,” says Perrin Ireland.