The gut microbiota acts as an essential organ that profoundly influences many aspects of human health, including the immune system, metabolism, and neurological functions like mood and behavior.

“It's not just quirky part of our biology. It really is holding the key to health of our immune system, our metabolism, there's a brain-gut access so it's dictating mood, behavior perhaps impacting things like autism and neurodegeneration.”

Humans should be redefined as a complex ecosystem that is more microbial than human in terms of cell and gene count.

“So both by cell number and by gene number we're actually more microbial than we are human. So I think the research from our lab and other labs in this area is really redefining how we think of ourselves as human beings.”