27. March 2016

In “The Lives of a Cell”, L. Thomas restated a hitherto prosaic observation as a profound conjecture, i.e, that mitochondria - the earliest aerobic bacteria - may have “created” us as a ‘symbiont utilitarian layer’ for their survival. The same can be argued for the bacteria resident in the gastrointestinal system which, to put it bluntly, may have ‘created’ us in order to feed them. There are more bacteria in the human body (>500 species) than there are human cells. Most of...