Some scientists say that human beings are more bacteria than human, with bacteria cells found in and on our body outnumbering human cells 10 to 1. Others claim that the bacteria found on each one of us could fill up a half-gallon jug. Others still are unsure how much bacteria we’re covered in, but it’s a lot, and probably more than the average person is comfortable thinking about.
Thankfully, Mark Smith PhD ’14 isn’t the average person. A microbiologist, Smith came to MIT to study this huge community of bacteria known as the microbiome, focusing specifically on the bacteria in the gastrointestinal track. Smith worked in the Alm Lab developing computational and experimental methods to engineer to microbiome. He explains some of his research, “We would find healthy patients and a disease cohort, take stools samples to sequence their microbiome and find signatures that distinguish between them. We find there are a lot of diseases that have distinct microbial compositions. The question is does disease cause the altered microbiome, or does the altered microbiome cause the disease?”

In this Slice of MIT podcast, you’ll learn how fecal transplants work, why they’re effective in combating C. Diff, and what the future of microbiome research looks like.

Music: “Monster Promenade” “The Show Must Be Go” and “Life of Riley”
All songs by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0