And if so, can they travel from person to person?
A small insight into this question came at one of the presentations at the International Human Microbiome Congress (covered by New Scientist in a short piece here). James Scott, who studies molecular genetics at the University of Toronto, reported that the gut microbes of babies, as found in their poop, were also in the dust in the babies’ homes. It’s not clear whether this means that bacteria in the dust are colonizing the babies or vice versa—or both—but it’s still something of a surprise. Gut microbes don’t seem like the sort to thrive outside the body, as they tend to require an oxygen-free environment. But maybe the gut bacteria in the dust are in a dormant form, waiting to be absorbed into a new gut before flowering into life again.
