Wednesday, September 14, 2005

OUR PULLULATING SELVES

Macrophage (one of those lumenal critters inside YOU)

Though you may not realize it, you have a highly complex and diverse microbial ecosystem living in the deepest recesses of your bowels.

The adult human body contains an estimated 1 * 10^14 cells (a 1 followed by 14 zeros..), 10% of which actually belong to us!! Thus, we have roughly 10 times more cells living in us than we do cells that make up our own bodies. Most of these 'outside' cells are bacteria living in the gastrointestinal tract. More than 400 species of microbes live in the colon alone, and can reach a density of 1 * 10^11 organism per milliliter of 'intestinal lumenal contents.'
-- Courtesy of madsci.org

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