Microbiome

Over the past two decades, scientists have focused on a new scientific subject that reevaluates the human condition and requires a completely new scientific methodology: the human microbiome. Thousands of different bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viruses together form a microbial flora that exists in our gut and fulfills important functions in our intestines, mouths, and on our skin. Understanding microbiota alters and challenges our concepts of immunology, metabolism, and the relation between nutrition and mental health, and also helps us learn more about the pathogenesis of diseases, the development of which are associated with a lack of microbial diversity. Studying the microbiome sheds new light on the relationship between humankind and nature highlights the new micro-biopolitics we are now facing.