Long before passenger planes carried infectious diseases to far-flung parts of the globe, dust storms were doing the same thing. Ongoing research into what lives in airborne dust has revealed a thriving microbial source of disease that encircles the planet.

Like it or not, your mouth is home to a thriving community of microbial life. More than 600 different species of bacteria reside in this "microbiome," yet everyone hosts a unique set of bugs, and this could have important implications for health and disease. In a study published online in Genome Research (www.genome.org), scientists have performed the first global survey of salivary microbes, finding that the oral microbiome of your neighbor is just as different from yours as someone across the globe. The human body harbors ten times more bacterial cells than human cells – a stunning figure that suggests a likely dynamic between ourselves and the bacteria we carry, both in healthy and disease states. The National Institutes of Health recently launched an initiative to categorize the microbiomes of several regions of the body, with early studies focusing on the intestines and skin. It is appreciated that the human mouth, a major entry point for bacteria into the body, also contains a diverse array of microbial species. Yet microbiome diversity between individuals, and how this relates to diet, environment, health, and disease, remains unexplored.

EPA Project Officer: Krishman, B.

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Nature Reviews Microbiology and The ISME Journal present a specially commissioned set of articles that highlight the importance of microorganisms in climatic processes and research the generation of new energy sources.