A simple illustration of what your genome is up against. This is a representation of the proportion of your DNA (in red) in relation to the 10,000 or so bacteria that live in or on you (in black). If you are keeping score, the microbes win 100 to 1.
Posted in Bacteria, Education, Microbiology | Tags: Bacteria, Biology, bonnie bassler ted, Cell (biology), Education, Genome, Microbiome, STEM
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[...] A simple illustration of what your genome is up against. This is a representation of the proportion of your DNA (in red) in relation to the 10,000 or so bacteria that live in or on you (in b… [...]
By: Infographic: You vs. Your Microbiome | Science Education and Communication | Scoop.it on March 6, 2013
at 11:46 am
Cool idea – thanks for sharing the graphic. But I’m a little confused about exactly what is quantified proportionally ehre. Is it total genetic material in all my cells vs total genetic material in all bacterial cells in my personal microbiome? Also, is there a comparable figure that compares my biomass to my personal microbiome’s biomass?
By: Sandra M. Chung (@sandramchung) on March 6, 2013
at 11:47 am
Thanks a lot! I will update the text, but it is a comparison of the total amount of DNA (all your cells vs. all microbe cells).
By: Matt Russell on March 6, 2013
at 11:51 am
The total number of bacterial cells outnumber your total human cells 10 to 1.
By: Matt Russell on March 6, 2013
at 11:57 am
Wait – aren’t human genomes a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the average bacterial genome?
By: Sandra M. Chung (@sandramchung) on March 6, 2013
at 12:02 pm
It is a little under two orders of magnitude. However, the number of genes for human less than 30,000, but bacterial genes number about 3 million.
By: Matt Russell on March 6, 2013
at 12:36 pm
Sorry to be nitpicky, but I’d really like to point out this infographic to other interested folks and I need to be able to accurately describe what it depicts. Is it bacterial cells: human cells or bacterial DNA: human DNA? Those ratios cannot both be 10:1 if the amount of DNA per human cell is on average ~100 times larger than the amount of DNA per bacterial cell.
By: Sandra M. Chung (@sandramchung) on March 6, 2013
at 12:47 pm
In regards to cells: bacteria outnumber human 10:1 (not depicted here). In regards to DNA: depicted here is the ratio of bacteria genes to human genes, 100:1. Hope this makes sense.
By: Matt Russell on March 6, 2013
at 12:50 pm
According to Bonnie Bassler, we are 99% bacteria and 1% human.
By: omnia on March 6, 2013
at 12:47 pm
Exactly! That is one thing I’m trying to get across.
By: Matt Russell on March 6, 2013
at 12:48 pm
So it’s something like the circle diagram on this page, but to scale: http://mpkb.org/home/pathogenesis/microbiota
By: Sandra M. Chung (@sandramchung) on March 6, 2013
at 12:59 pm
Exactly. I thought scale was the most important thing to consider. It really gets the point across.
By: Matt Russell on March 6, 2013
at 1:01 pm