Jeffrey Gordon

I heard a talk by Dr. Jeffrey Gordon, not Jeff Gordon, for those of you wondering. I was pretty excited about the talk because Dr. Gordon has been putting out some very interesting work concerning the human microbiome and the role of microbial communities in our gut in determining how the host responds to its environmental conditions and diseases.

The talk was very well attended, a testament to the interest in this new field. Dr. Gordon, as seems to be the custom nowadays, introduced the concept that we are more bacterial than eukaryotic, at least by sheer number of cells. I think he mentioned we are 90% microbial and 10% “us” and referred to the collective organism as a supra-organism.

The largest diversity of microorganisms living in our body are located in our gastrointestinal tract. Dr. Gordon alluded to the fact that the modern world with the ability to travel from one place to another, the exposure to many different kinds of foods and the 60 years in which humans have been regularly using antibiotics can really affect the diversity of bacteria in our gut.

2 out of the 100 phyla of bacteria known dominate. These are the firmicutes and the bacteroidetes. There are 8 others in smaller proportion. There is at least one Archaeon. There might be more phages than bacteria in our gut!