PIONEERING THE INTERNAL FRONTIER: Understanding Our Gut Microbes Could Lead to New Medicines. “The diversity of the human collection of microbial residents—known as the microbiome—became more clear last year when the Human Microbiome Project described the diversity and abundance of microbes living in and on the human body (see “Researchers Catalog Your Microbial Zoo”). For every one human cell in the body, there are an estimated 10 microbial cells. Changes in this microbial zoo have been correlated with many health problems: from gastrointestinal disease to diabetes, obesity, and inflammation. . . . One reason it has been difficult to profile an individual’s microbiome is that most of these organisms can’t grow in pure cultures of a single species. So Second Genome uses DNA sequencing along with another DNA analysis technology developed by Andersen to identify community members and to look at gene activity in both the bugs and the human body.”