MicrobeWorld

Natgure, 25 November 2010, has a fascinating article by Lizzie Buchen on a collaboration among Jill Banfield (UC Berkeley), a geologist, Michael Morowitz (University of Pittsburgh), a neonatal surgeon, and David Relman (Stanford University), a pioneer in the field of microbiome studies, to apply techniques developed by microbial ecologists to attempt to solve clinical problems. The immediate focus is a potentially fatal disease in neonates, but ultimately there may be answers to conditions such as obesity, cancer, autism, and MS. As Jeff Gordon (Washington University) says, the barriers between environmental and medical microbiology are breaking down,