Microbes, Diet, and Immunity Dancing Together
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Knowledge about the human microbiome, those trillions of bacteria, viruses, and other microbes that inhabit our bodies, is revolutionizing medicine just as mapping the human genome continues to do. Indeed, what we are learning could take us even further because the microbiome can be altered by diet, exercise, and stress control. Computational biology, DNA sequencing, and other analytical techniques are revealing ever more about the microbiome’s role at the intersection of health and disease, how it influences the immune system, and the role it plays in medical conditions as varied as autism and cancer, cardiovascular disease and dementia.
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