Like a detective out of a whodunit novel, Dr. David Fredricks revels in solving mysteries. But unlike his literary counterparts, his "crime scenes" are in the human body. The culprits? Elusive microbes suspected of causing everything from lethal infections in cancer patients to persistent illnesses in otherwise healthy people.
Because we're a million times bigger than a microbe, we tend to think of bacteria as unimportant. But make no mistake — if you look at the number of cells in our bodies, we're vastly outnumbered. We house 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells. And though we're made of an impressive 30,000 genes, scientists estimate at least 2 million unique bacterial genes flourish in the human body.
To read on, see this issue's cover story.
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