Did you know that the number of all the human cells that make up your body is less than the number of bacteria cells that live in it? In fact, the bacteria outnumber your cells ten to one! And most of these little creatures live in your intestines, commonly called your gut.
Before birth, a baby's gut is squeaky clean. But within just a few days, bacteria start colonizing it, causing diapers to get smelly. Those poop-filled diapers are treasure troves to geneticist Chana Palmer and her colleagues at Stanford University. They spent a year poking around in fourteen babies' diapers looking for clues as to how our teeming zoo of gut bacteria develops.
"The …
