Microbial communities that live on and in the human body, known collectively as the microbiome, are thought to have a critical role in human health and disease. Five years ago, the National Institutes of Health launched the ambitious Human Microbiome Project (HMP) to define the boundaries of bacterial variation found in 242 healthy human beings.
“In order to understand what sick is, it’s helpful to define the healthy microbiome first,” says MBL scientist Susan M. Huse.