你身體里過半組成不是人類

More than half of your body is not human, say scientists.

科學家說，人超過一半的身體部分不是人類。

Human cells make up only 43% of the body’s total cell count. The rest are microscopic colonists.

人體細胞僅占身體細胞總數(shù)的43%。其余的是微觀殖民者。

Understanding this hidden half of ourselves - our microbiome - is rapidly transforming understanding of diseases from allergy to Parkinson’s.

理解關(guān)于我們的隱藏的一半，即我們的微生物群， 正在迅速轉(zhuǎn)變?nèi)藗儗^敏和帕金森病的認識。

The field is even asking questions of what it means to be "human" and is leading to new innovative treatments as a result.

該領(lǐng)域甚至提出了“人類”意味著什么的問題，并導致了新的創(chuàng)新療法。

"They are essential to your health," says Prof Ruth Ley, the director of the department of microbiome science at the Max Planck Institute, "your body isn’t just you".

“它們對你的健康至關(guān)重要，”馬克斯普朗克研究所微生物組科學系主任Ruth Ley教授說，“你的身體不僅僅是你”。

No matter how well you wash, nearly every nook and cranny of your body is covered in microscopic creatures.

無論你洗得多干凈，你的身體幾乎每個角落都會被微生物覆蓋。

This includes bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea (organisms originally misclassified as bacteria). The greatest concentration of this microscopic life is in the dark murky depths of our oxygen-deprived bowels.

這包括細菌，病毒，真菌和古細菌(最初被誤分類為細菌的生物體)。這種微生命最集中的地方是我們黑暗渾濁的缺氧的腸道的深處。

Prof Rob Knight, from University of California San Diego, told the BBC: "You’re more microbe than you are human."

加州大學圣地亞哥分校的羅布奈特教授告訴BBC：“比其人類，我們更多是由微生物組成。”

Originally it was thought our cells were outnumbered 10 to one.

原先的認識是我們?nèi)祟惐旧淼募毎麛?shù)量超過10比1。

"That’s been refined much closer to one-to-one, so the current estimate is you’re about 43% human if you’re counting up all the cells," he says.

“這已經(jīng)更新為接近一比一了，所以目前的估計是，如果你將所有的細胞計算在內(nèi)，你大約有43%的部分是人類，”他說。

But genetically we’re even more outgunned.

但從遺傳角度看，我們更加處于下風。

The human genome - the full set of genetic instructions for a human being - is made up of 20,000 instructions called genes.

人類基因組 - 人類的全套基因指令 - 由20,000個稱為基因的指令組成。

But add all the genes in our microbiome together and the figure comes out between two and 20 million microbial genes.

但是將我們微生物群中的所有基因加在一起，這個數(shù)字就出現(xiàn)在兩百萬到兩千萬個微生物基因之間。

Prof Sarkis Mazmanian, a microbiologist from Caltech, argues: "We don’t have just one genome, the genes of our microbiome present essentially a second genome which augment the activity of our own.

加州理工學院的微生物學家Sarkis Mazmanian教授認為：“我們不只有一個基因組，我們微生物組的基因基本上是第二個基因組，它增加了我們自己的活動。”

"What makes us human is, in my opinion, the combination of our own DNA, plus the DNA of our gut microbes."

“在我看來，讓我們成為人類的是我們自己的DNA和我們腸道微生物的DNA的結(jié)合。”

It would be naive to think we carry around so much microbial material without it interacting or having any effect on our bodies at all.

認為我們攜帶如此多的微生物物質(zhì)而沒有相互作用或?qū)ξ覀兊纳眢w有任何影響是天真的。

Science is rapidly uncovering the role the microbiome plays in digestion, regulating the immune system, protecting against disease and manufacturing vital vitamins.

科學正在迅速揭示微生物在消化，調(diào)節(jié)免疫系統(tǒng)，預防疾病和制造重要維生素方面的作用。