Humans: 1 Part Bacterial, 1 Part Human

A favorite opening line for microbiome researchers is that we have 10 times more microbial cells than human cells. However, a new paper up on bioRxiv suggests that the number of bacterial and humans are equal! About 10^13 for each.

The paper arrives at this result by revisiting papers with measurements of bacteria per gram of wet stool, the volume of the colon, and estimates on the number of human cells per organ type.

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/01/06/036103.full.pdf

It looks like the name of this blog is off. Unless I count viruses...

Guess I'll have to retire this shirt...