{"id":899,"date":"2018-06-29T10:22:29","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T17:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/wordpress\/?p=899"},"modified":"2025-08-04T13:45:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T20:45:36","slug":"rob-knight-featured-on-bbc-how-can-you-improve-your-microbiome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/?p=899","title":{"rendered":"Rob Knight featured on BBC: More than half your body is not human"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Rob Knight featured on BBC to talk about the topic, “More than half your body is not human”<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

…<\/span><\/p>\n

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Prof Rob Knight, from University of California San Diego, told the BBC: “You’re more microbe than you are human.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Originally it was thought our cells were outnumbered 10 to one.<\/span><\/p>\n

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“That’s been refined much closer to one-to-one, so the current estimate is you’re about 43% human if you’re counting up all the cells,” he says.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But genetically we’re even more outgunned.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The human genome – the full set of genetic instructions for a human being – is made up of 20,000 instructions called genes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But add all the genes in our microbiome together and the figure comes out between two and 20 million microbial genes.<\/span><\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/p>\n

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Prof Knight said: “We’re finding ways that these tiny creatures totally transform our health in ways we never imagined until recently.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It is a new way of thinking about the microbial world. To date, our relationship with microbes has largely been one of warfare.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Rob Knight featured on BBC to talk about the topic, “More than half your body is not human” … Prof Rob Knight, from University of California San Diego, told<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1623,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions\/1623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}