
Your 'Microbial Cloud' Is Like a Floating, Invisible Fingerprint - dpflan
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/your-microbial-cloud-is-like-a-floating-invisible-fingerprint
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mirimir
This reminds me of other interesting observations about bacteria. First, our
human DNA sequence is shorter than the aggregate DNA sequence of bacteria in
our guts etc. Second, bacteria are ubiquitous, found as deep as a few km.
Third, global bacterial biomass is arguably comparable to total animal and
plant biomass. Fourth, only about 1% of the bacteria in random samples from
the environment have ever been cultured and cataloged, so about 99% are known
only through DNA sequence analysis.

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evan_
Should be noted that this is a product of the University of Oregon, not
"Oregon University"

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prawn
Will we eventually be identified and tracked in physical spaces by our
microbial cloud signature?

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anon4
> _Most_ of the 11 subjects had unique microbial clouds

So even in their tiny sample size they wouldn't be able to identify
individuals. I suspect if you increase the size, you'd find people from same
families have similar microbial biomes and they are not at all unique.

