At the American Museum of Natural History, meet your microbiome
Robert DeSalle may have given me the most unusual compliment I’ve ever received. “You’d be a good candidate” as a donor for somebody requiring a fecal transplant, “because your gut microbiome appears to be very healthy and normal,” he said.
Perhaps a bit of explanation is in order. Starting with how we alighted on the subject in the first place.
We happened to be sitting in the American Museum of Natural History, near the entrance to “The Secret World Inside You.” It’s an exhibition about the human microbiome: the universe of microbes—bacteria, fungi, viruses—that live in us and on us. The exhibition runs through Aug. 14.
Fecal transplants are performed to replace good bacteria that have been killed or suppressed, usually by antibiotics. That causes bad bacteria to overpopulate the colon, potentially causing fatal diarrhea. Ahead of visiting the show, I had my microbiome analyzed by a company called uBiome. That I am an excellent fecal-donor candidate came as good news.
That’s because an analysis of my microbiome showed it is less diverse than that of 52% of the population. When I shared the results with my daughter Lucy—who, by the way, works at the AMNH—her reaction was “What did you expect?” Or words to that effect.
ENLARGEShe was commenting on my diet, which favors cupcakes over kale.
“Anything green is good,” acknowledged Dr. DeSalle, a co-curator of the exhibition with Susan Perkins, and a scientist in the museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology and the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics. “Anything white is not.”
We’d just met, so Dr. DeSalle couldn’t say why, despite my eating habits, my gut remains relatively robust. But I have a theory involving beer, which he confirmed.
I tend to have the occasional bottle. So does he. “Beer is what you call a probiotic,” he explained. “It’s cultivated from a living organism—yeast—but the yeast is dead.”
I’d come to see the show and talk science. Nonetheless, the opportunity to converse with an expert, perhaps not just of genomics but also of fermentation, prompted me to ask the name of his favorite beer.
“I’m really getting into Knee Deep,” he told me, referring to a California craft brewery. He finds it at a place called Alphabet City Beer Co. on Avenue C.
But back to my microbiome. While my diet might not be the healthiest, I’ve always been a big believer in germs—or rather the ability of the human immune system to handle them.
Dr. DeSalle agreed. “The old paradigm of thinking about microbes is they’re a bad thing,” he said. “But the new paradigm is that 99.9% of them don’t make us sick.”
In fact, they’re integral to the proper functioning of our digestive and immune systems. Without them, Dr. DeSalle added, “we’d probably die quickly.”
As vital as they may be, turning organisms that tiny into a museum exhibition must have been a challenge. But the institution seems to have risen to the occasion with exhibits, such as one devoted to athlete’s foot, where in a highly magnified model, rod-shaped bacteria are engaged in battle with green filaments of fungus.
There’s also a live-theater presentation where a museum staffer invites you to contemplate your navel—literally. “Our belly buttons are filled with microbes,” he explained. “We don’t wash out belly buttons. It remains moist; it’s protected.”
Here are some other thoughts Dr. DeSalle shared for the care and maintenance of your microbiome: Kissing, especially frequent French kissing, facilitates the swapping of microbes. Households with dogs have a more varied microbiome than those without.
“Children raised on farms often have less allergies, because they’re exposed to a more variable environment,” Dr. DeSalle said.
I would have thought the best way to bolster your microbiome might be to ride the L train to Brooklyn. But the scientist suggested a walk in the woods instead. Trees and grass and forest animals are littered with microbes.
“You don’t see a lot of that in the city,” he said.
While AMNH scientists are known for their far-flung field trips, Dr. DeSalle sounded not the least abashed that most of his research involves number-crunching on a computer. The study of the microbiome stands on the frontier of science.
Colleagues who study dinosaurs, fish or insects are “finding new variations on a theme,” Dr. DeSalle said. Those studying the microbiome “are finding whole new themes. If you’re an explorer, microbes is where it’s at. It’s not dinosaurs.”
“I walked into Central Park once,” he added, “and collected pond water and found a bunch of new species. We’re trying to name them right now.”
Write to Ralph Gardner Jr. at ralph.gardner@wsj.com