A rendezvous with our microbes

Abstract

On November 2–3, 2009 an international group of scientists representing multiple disciplines gathered to consider the current state of our understanding of the symbiotic and beneficial relationships between microbes and humans and to define the challenges, gaps in knowledge, and opportunities that this exciting field of study now offers. A number of adjectives come to mind when describing the subject of microbes and health, ranging from ancient and historic , to integrative and interdisciplinary , to timely and pressing . Coexistence and coevolution with microbes has been a theme of life on Earth for all metazoans past and present. Historically, the discovery that microbes are an integral part of us was made as soon as Antonie van Leeuwenhoek peered through his microscope and examined dental plaque sampled from himself and others (without institutional review board approval!). His sense of awe and his early appreciation of the diversity our microbial partners were evident in the words he chose for a letter written to the Royal Society of London in September 1683: > “Though my teeth are kept usually very clean, nevertheless, when I view them in a magnifying glass, I find growing between them a little white matter as thick as wetted flower: in this substance though I could not perceive any motion, I judged there might probably be living creatures. I therefore took some of this flower and mixed it either with pure rain water wherein were no animals, or else with some of my spittle (having no air bubbles to cause a motion in it) and then to my great surprise perceived that the aforesaid matter maintained very many small living animals, which moved themselves very extravagantly. ….The spittle of an old man that had lived soberly, had no animals in it; but the substance upon and between his teeth … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jgordon{at}wustl.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1