Currently, one of the most emailed stories at The New York Times is Carl Zimmer's fascinating piece on what's being call the human microbiome, "Tending the Body's Microbial Garden." It's a subject we examined in our own pages last Fall when contributor Brendan Buhler wrote "The Teeming Metropolis of You." Buhler's article begins:
You are mostly not you.That is to say that 90 percent of the cells residing in your body are not human cells, they are microbes. Viewed from the perspective of most of its inhabitants, your body is not so much the temple and vessel of the human soul as it is a complex and ambulatory feeding mechanism for a methane reactor in your small intestine.
This is the kind of information microbiologists like to share at dinner parties, and you should too, especially if you can punctuate it with a belch.
We're happy to let you know that Brendan's story has been selected for inclusion in the 2012 Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology -- the second time CALIFORNIA has been selected for that particular series. Pretty impressive, no? Belch.
Excuse us.
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