Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Tracking Your Critters

It has been said that over half of the genetic material in or on our bodies is not human in origin.  One area where there has been a lot of study in the last five years has been on the flora in our guts.  The bacteria in our guts has been linked to various problems - ulcers, obesity, stupidity (ok, maybe not the last one).  There is now a start-up out there looking to help you understand your very own flora.  They call themselves uBiome.  I think that they should be call uPoop and then you can have an iPhone app called (obviously) iPoop where they deliver the results of your most recent stool sample.

Joking aside, this looks super interesting to me and when the prices drop to something less than $89 per sample, I might dive in (so to speak).  I do have some concern that the FDA will shut them down in a way similar to 23andMe, so I'll wait until that gets sorted out, too.

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