What's Lurking In Your Microbiome? Possibly, a Cure for Disease

[MachineGhost]

[quote=http://www.fastcompany.com/3039891/gut-check]The epicenter of the U.S. biotechnology business is just north of San Francisco International Airport, on a few dozen isolated acres wedged between U.S. 101 and San Francisco Bay. Unless there’s a good reason to visit one of the companies here—Genentech, for instance, or Amgen—you might write off the neighborhood as an especially dull office park. There are no upscale stores or open-air cafés; no Uber drivers circling around; no hoodie-clad twentysomethings hauling day packs. Here, one quiet avenue leads to another, lined with sleek glass buildings that get buzzed by low-flying jets and rattled by breezes whipping off the bay. But within a quarter-mile radius, hundreds of the world’s leading scientists are pushing the envelope of medicine, vying to create novel cures for disease. Some of them, in fact, work beyond the vanguard—in areas of drug development so new they don’t yet have a proper name.

Second Genome, a small outfit staffed by a dozen people just a few blocks away from Genentech’s lab, is one of the boldest. The four-year-old company focuses on the microbiome: the trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi that people carry around with them from birth until death. All told, our microbiomes weigh between 1 and 3 pounds and are distributed among different areas of our bodies. There’s a bacterial community living on your skin, another around your groin, and another in your mouth. The ecosystem that lives in your gut, though, is the largest and most complex—"one that is pervasive and profound in its connection to human health," Peter DiLaura, Second Genome’s CEO, tells me when I visit. Everyone’s microbiome is different—and constantly changing in its bacterial compositions and concentrations.[/quote]

[dualstow]

Reading between the lines here, should I start saving my poop?

[MachineGhost]

I just finished reading the whole article.  This is really exciting!  No longer do we have to wait decades for orthodox medicine to finally "get a clue" which has typically been the case in the past with anything heterodox.  Thank gawd.