My Microbiome

Each part of the human body is completely different in the microbial world view.  Temperature varies, the surface can be dry, moist, or oily, and air exposure varies dramatically.  So different microbes grow on different parts of your body.

I made some plates of my microbiome.  They weren't very interesting at first, but after growing up for weeks sitting out at room temperature, some interesting things grew!

Face: forehead (top), cheek (left), chin (right)

Mouth: cheek (top), tongue (bottom)

Hand: fingers (top), thumb (bottom)

Foot: toes (top), heel (bottom)

 
The hand plate looks crazy, I know.  I believe those two colonies that overgrew the whole plate are not my microbiome!  They look like the stuff we call contamination in the lab.  Look how invasive it is.  If it were really part of my microbiome, it would completely kill off everything else.

In general, moist areas have more microbes in total.  My feet and mouth are the most moist of the areas I sampled so it makes sense that I got the most stuff growing on the plates from those areas.

The biggest shock for me from these plates is how different my cheek and tongue are.  I would have thought the same stuff is growing on both of them.

PS. these plates smell awful... bacteria stink.