By Hervé Ratel THE Subscribers
The billions of bacteria that inhabit the intestines, lungs, mouth, skin and genitals play a vital role in the body's balance.
Illustration of the inside of the human intestine. Bacteria (blue) live along the wall of the intestinal villi (pink).
Photo by MARK BELAN/ARTSCI STUDIOS/SCIENC / MB1 / Science Photo Library via AFP
This article is taken from the monthly Sciences et Avenir n°941-942, dated July-August 2025.
A long time terra incognita, the human microbiota only began to be revealed to the scientific community in the early 2000s, when molecular imaging tools and high-throughput genome sequencing were used.
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