3Q: Eric Alm on the mysteries of the microbiome
Eric Alm is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and biological engineering at MIT and co-director of the Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics. He also serves on the board of directors for the non-profit stool bank, OpenBiome, and clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company Finch Therapeutics. His work focuses on understanding and engineering the human microbiome, which he defines as the microbes — bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and viruses — that live on and inside the human body. The microbiome plays a key role in human health and disease, and Alm and his colleagues strive to translate basic science discoveries rapidly into clinical settings, where they can contribute to better outcomes for patients. Q. People are increasingly curious about the state of their microbiome. Could you tell us what a healthy microbiome looks like? Does the number of different types of bacteria species in the microbiome matter for health? A. We don’t really know if diversity...