In the gleaming new Laboratories of Molecular Anthropology and Microbiome Research, opened in 2014 at the University of Oklahoma, positive air pressure keeps out external contamination, and intense ultraviolet lamps are on standby to sterilize the lab between uses. The focus of work here is not for the squeamish: Lab co-directors Christina Warinner and Cecil Lewis Jr. are digging into fossilized feces and dental plaque from long-dead humans, seeking traces of DNA from the trillions of bacteria the bodies hosted in life — just like we do today.
Collectively known as the microbiome and located primarily in the large intestine, these cohabitants outnumber their host human cells at least 10 to 1. Although scientists have known of this bacterial horde for years, it’s only recently that we’ve begun to understand its crucial role in human well-being. Some research has even suggested a link between off-kilter microbiomes and the increase in many “diseases of civilization,” such as obesity, asthma and Type 2 diabetes.
Thanks to powerful gene-sequencing techniques developed in the past two decades during the race to decode the human genome, researchers are beginning to reconstruct what our ancestors’ microbiomes looked like, potentially going back thousands of years. For the first time, we’re learning about the evolution of the 90 percent of us that isn’t, well, us.
