Over the last 10 years, the U.S. National Institutes of Health has invested $170 million to better understand the universe of bacteria that live within us—the so-called microbiome. In the first phase of the project, researchers focused on cataloguing the myriad types of microbes found throughout the body, including in the mouth, nose, gut, and reproductive tract. The latest phase of the research, described in three papers published May 29 in Nature and Nature Medicine, focused on better understanding how changes in those microbial populations affect three conditions: diabetes, preterm birth and inflammatory bowel diseases.
