The following video from the American Society for Microbiology is a short discussion with Rob Knight, now a professor at the University of California, San Diego.
Knight works on the microbiome project, which works to reveal more about characteristics of the community of microbes that are living in the gut and its relationship to human health. That community has been the subject of intense research over the past few years, especially since the advent of genetic technology that easily allows researchers to assay that gut microbe population. It is increasingly obvious that we live in close symbiosis with this community, which has a big influence on our health.
Knight discusses some surprises from his findings, such as the fact that people are widely varied in the composition of their gut communities; we are not all colonized in the same way with the same microbes in the same ratios.
