Each of us is made up of about 50 trillion cells, which is pretty mind-blowing until you consider the number of microbial cells living on or in each of us.  It’s estimated that a healthy adult is lugging around 10 times more bugs, most of them bacteria, than human cells.
Just as the tiny differences we [...]

Tags: Bacteria, H. pylori, human microbiome, salivary microbiome

Not all bacteria are bad.  Sure, there are plenty of nasty bugs that can make life pretty unpleasant; the ones that cause leprosy, anthrax, and cholera immediately come to mind.
But there are also plenty of beneficial bacteria living inside of us that we may not even know about. Some of them help us synthesize vitamins, digest [...]

Tags: Austronesia, Bacteria, Pacific Islands