Although they evolved independently, ant-eating
B O OKS et al .
MICROBIOME
Living in a microbial world
Microbes take center stage in a charming tour
of Earth’s microscopic menagerie
By Susan Perkins
O
nce you’ve experienced “the transfor-
mation,” you never look at the world
in the same way. For me, it occurred
over 3 years of curating a public ex-
hibit on the human microbiome at
the American Museum of Natural
History. After totally immersing myself in
the topic, I viewed every bite of food, every
handshake, every scratch of a dog’s head
through a different lens. How was this ac-
tion shaping my microbiome—the com-
munity of trillions of microorganisms that
called my body home? Ed Yong, the author
of the new book I Contain Multitudes: The
Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of
Life, also experienced this transformation,
and he’s written a delightful, witty book that
will surely be a pathway for his readers to
do the same.
For most of human history, we were
unaware of microbes. Then in the 1670s,
the clever Dutch drapemaker Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek crafted a handheld contrap-
tion that could magnify objects more than
250 times. He used it to explore pond wa-
ter, insect guts, and samples taken from his
own body, observing tiny “animalcules”—
The reviewer is at the Sackler Institute for Comparative
Genomics, American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central
Park West, New York, NY 10024, USA. Email: perkins@amnh.org
450 29 JULY 2016 • VOL 353 ISSUE 6298
mammals—including the pangolin (shown), armadillos,
I Contain Multitudes
The Microbes Within Us
and a Grander View of Life
Ed Yong
HarperCollins, 2016. 363 pp.
the first glimpses of living bacteria and
protozoa.
In the ensuing decades, new discover-
ies linked microbes to human health and
showed that certain ones were responsible
for specific ailments. This “germ theory”
of disease has been the prevailing view in
medicine ever since.
With better culturing methods and early
DNA sequencing efforts, the census of the
microbial menagerie that calls our planet—
and our bodies—home began to expand.
Next-generation sequencing methods have
turbocharged that discovery and revealed a
previously unimaginable diversity of novel
microbes.
Each one of us has a different pattern
of microbial diversity that can correspond
to variations in metabolism, disease, and
even behavior. This discovery promises to
be transformative for medicine and bio-
technology. Acknowledging the growing
momentum in this field, the White House
Office of Science and Technology Policy
recently announced the creation of the
Published by AAAS
and aardvarks—all possess similar gut microbes.
National Microbiome Initiative, a collabora-
tive effort of federal, public, and private en-
tities to accelerate microbiome science.
In 10 chapters, Yong vividly describes
the intricate alliances forged by microbes
with every other organism on the planet.
He guides us on a historical journey, show-
ing how key discoveries of symbioses, such
as early work on the microbes that inhabit
termite guts, have been crucial for opening
up the “microbiome universe” to scientists.
We learn how bacteria allow the Hawaiian
bobtail squid to glow, how they permit pea
aphids to subsist on nothing but plant sap,
and how the wood rat has coopted them
Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ on July 28, 2016
so it can digest otherwise toxic creosote.
We also learn a lot about parasitic bacteria
called Wolbachia that infect insects all over
the globe, manipulating their behavior and
reproductive fitness. As Yong reveals, these
particular bacteria may be useful as a vec-
tor control strategy in our fight against
disease-bearing hosts like mosquitos.
Any book on microbiomes would be
remiss if it did not discuss dysbiosis—a
condition in which microbes and host fall
out of balance—and Yong does not disap-
point, talking about things like emerging
Clostridium difficile infections and the
collapse of coral reef ecosystems. But he
wisely never falls into the trap of labeling
any microbes as inherently “good” or “bad”
and stops short of predicting how condi-
tions like obesity, infections, and allergies
will soon be a thing of the past (as less rig-
orous journalists have been known to do
when writing about this burgeoning field).
The most delightful part of Yong’s book
is that he does not just tell the stories of
microbiomes, he also introduces readers
PHOTO: © EPA EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY CREATIVE ACCOUNT/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
to dozens of the scientists studying them.
He visited their labs, met their germ-free
mice, and made field trips to the zoo with
them. He probed them with questions and
captures their motivations and personali-
ties perfectly. Their stories and conversa-
tions radiate the excitement of unlocking
new secrets, putting a human face on the
science.
The title of the book comes from Walt
Whitman’s classic poem Song of Myself, in
which he rejoices in humanity’s role in the
great ecosystem of Earth. In 1855, Whit-
man could hardly appreciate the extent of
the microbial world, but Yong deftly weaves
it into the poet’s ode. As Whitman writes: “I
am the mate and companion of people, all
just as immortal and fathomless as myself.”
10.1126/science.aag1515
sciencemag.org SCIENCE
 Living in a microbial world
Susan Perkins (July 28, 2016)
Science 353 (6298), 450. [doi: 10.1126/science.aag1515]

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