William Atkins
Saturday, 30 May 2009 19:08
Science -
Biology
Page 1 of 3
National Institutes of Health researchers reveal that about one thousand species of bacteria like to call your skin their home. However, on the bright side, most of the bacteria are helpful for a healthy body.
According to their U.S. study, which was published on May 29, 2009, in the journal
Science, they say that the,
“Human skin is a large, heterogeneous organ that protects the body from pathogens while sustaining microorganisms that influence human health and disease.”
Their
Science article is titled “
Topographical and Temporal Diversity of the Human Skin Microbiome” and it was written by: Elizabeth A. Grice, Heidi H. Kong, Sean Conlan, Clayton B. Deming, Joie Davis, Alice C. Young, Gerard G. Bouffard, Robert W. Blakesley, Patrick R. Murray, Eric D. Green, Maria L. Turner, and Julia A. Segre.
Julia Segre, a senior investigator with The National Human Genome Research Institute's (NHGRI) and the head it its Epithelial Biology section, was the lead researcher in the study.
Dr. Segre studies the human skin and how it interacts with the outside world.
She states,
“The skin is a major organ system that has to interact with and adapt to the environment. It's the interface between our complex physiology and an often hostile environment that dries us out and exposes us to chemicals and infectious agents. You don't want kitchen cleanser in your bloodstream and your skin is the way you keep it out." [NHGRI: “
Unlocking The Skin's Many Secrets”]
Dr. Segre and her colleagues used cotton swabs to collect bacterial samples from ten healthy but “diverse” volunteers. Half of them were men, and the other half women. In all, the researchers found 112,283 organisms in the bodies of these participants.
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