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Of the 10 trillion cells in the human body, only about 1 trillion of them are Homo sapiens. The other 9 trillion are microbes living in every nook and cranny in and on the body. Nearly all of them are symbiotic, producing what nutritionists call "non-essential" amino acids and fatty acids (which we don't need in our food because microbes make them for us), important co-factors and vitamins, and crowding out or even fighting away pathogens.

The most common microbe by far is an intestinal Archaeon named Methanobrevibacter smithii, the main source of methane in human flatulence (necessary to keep the large intestinal contents moving; a lack of M. smithii can cause fatal levels of constipation). At numbers greater than 1 trillion, there are more M. smithii cells in the human body than there are H. sapiens cells.

I read a quote that was titled "Cheaney's Second Law": "We are not so much human as we are walking, talking bacterial ecosystems."

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14y ago

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