Proposal: Let's Create A Frozen Noah's Ark For Helpful Germs
It'd be like the Global Seed Vault on the frigid island of Spitsbergen, Norway — only it would contain helpful human bacteria.
Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello had just moved to New York when Hurricane Sandy blew in from the Atlantic and buffeted the East Coast.
She heard that the labs at New York University, where she was working — and its freezer — were losing power. So she ran to the failing freezer, took the microbiota samples she'd gathered as a researcher in Puerto Rico over the past 14 years and stored them elsewhere.
Microbiota are the bacteria colonizing the human body — the gut, skin, mouth, and so on
