microbes health

Harnessing microbes for better health and environment

We share our bodies and our surroundings with teeming communities of microbes that are crucial to the health of people and the planet, and now the Obama administration is beginning a major project to better understand those invisible ecosystems - even control them.

The National Microbiome Initiative being announced by White House science officials Friday aims to bring together scientists who study the microbes that live in the human gut and in the oceans, in farm soil and in hospitals - to speed discoveries that could bring big payoffs.

Consider: Taking antibiotics alters the diversity of your gut bacteria, which eventually settle . . .