CU gut check: Humans' important relationships under the microscope

We are not entirely human.

Scientists have found that the bacteria living inside us their tiny cells outnumbering human cells 10-to-1 have an outsized influence over almost everything about us.

There are, on average, 3 pounds of them in every adult human about the weight of an adult brain. And they provide humans with traits we did not evolve on our own.

"The field has been expanding exponentially," said professor Rob Knight, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Colorado and leading researcher whose name is ubiquitous in scientific publications on the subject. "Several hundred different laboratories in the U.S. are working in it. Ten years ago there were 20 labs."

Microbes are such a big part of human life that researchers are beginning to see humans and their microbial components as supraorganisms with mingled traits. And depending on the microbes present, this supraorganism is more or less likely to suffer from autism, obesity, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, allergies, depression, dental problems, immunity deficiencies, Crohn's disease, colon and other cancers and more, according to researchers worldwide.

The microbes residing on our hair and skin and inside our mouths, airways and digestive and reproductive systems exert massive effects over our health and vulnerability to disease.

But until recent years, human-associated microbes the "good" bacteria remained largely unstudied.

"We're right at the beginning of discovery," said Knight, who in 2009 earned an appointment to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, receiving a $1.5 million research budget over six years.

The field is being catapulted forward by technical and computational advances in genomic science, including the DNA sequencing of microbial communities.

A Smithsonian Magazine article described microbiome research as "Big Science" that "promises the biggest turnaround in medical thinking in 150 years."

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CU gut check: Humans' important relationships under the microscope