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The Human microbiota. Everyone has a slightly different mix of bugs that live in us and on us. They out number the cells of our body and perform many critical functions that are not well understood. They are as intimate to who we are as our own blood but we know very little about the role they play other than we could not live without them.The Elizabeth H. and James S. McDonnell III Genome Institute at Washington UniversityOur bodies are teeming with life – trillions of microbes occupy virtually every surface – inside and out. They even outnumber our own cells ten to one. And much like our planet has its ecosystem of plants and animals interacting with their environments, we have our own microscopic one filled with living organisms that inhabit our bodies’ diverse environments.“Our bodies are part of a microbial world,” says Dr. George Weinstock, associate director of The Genome Institute. “You can think of our ecosystems like you do rain forests and oceans, very different environments with communities of organisms that possess incredible, rich diversity.”A Microbial EcosystemMost of the time this microbial ecosystem coexists peacefully with us. Many of our microbes help us digest food, strengthen our immune systems and even protect us from dangerous pathogens. But it has proven very difficult to study many of these microbes, which differ depending on body site and individual. The microbes are also difficult to isolate and grow in the lab. As a result, researchers have understood little about which microbes reside in specific sites of the body. Now, a consortium of some 200 U.S. scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and elsewhere report findings from the most comprehensive census of the microbial makeup of healthy humans.Published June 14 in Nature and in several Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals, the research offers new details and even some surprises.Know Thy MicrobesFor example, the researchers found that even healthy people typically carry low levels of harmful bacteria in and on their bodies. But when a person is healthy, these pathogens don’t cause disease; they simply coexist in an abundance of beneficial microbes. Now, scientists can investigate why some pathogens can suddenly turn deadly, an endeavor that will refine current thinking on how microorganisms cause disease.“It’s not possible to understand human health and disease without exploring the massive community of microorganisms we carry around with us,” says Dr. Weinstock, one of the project’s principal investigators. “Knowing which microbes live in various ecological niches in healthy people allows us to better investigate what goes awry in diseases that are thought to have a microbial link, like Crohn’s, acne, periodontitis, vaginosis, or urethritis, and why dangerous pathogens sometimes, but not always, cause life-threatening illnesses.”Human Microbiome ProjectThe Genome Institute played a major role in the new research, known as the Human Microbiome Project. The five-year initiative was funded with $153 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with some $32 million coming to the university. TGI scientists decoded about half of the 5,000 specimens from nearly 250 healthy volunteers.To get a handle on the healthy human microbiome, the researchers sampled 15 body sites in men and 18 in women, including areas of the mouth (nine sites, including the teeth), skin (two behind the ear and each inner elbow), nose, vagina (three sites) and lower intestine (stool). In St. Louis, most samples were collected from study participants enrolled at the School of Medicine. Teeth and gum samples were collected at Saint Louis University’s dental school. Other samples came from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, the other site that enrolled study participants.In all, the scientists identified more than 10,000 species of microbes that occupy the human ecosystem, documenting the impressive diversity of microbial life in the human body with more accuracy than earlier studies.Taking InventoryUsing new genomic techniques, TGI assistant directors Dr. Erica Sodergren and Dr. Makedonka Mitreva, took an inventory of the microbes in the samples. One approach involved sequencing a gene found in all bacteria. "This gene, 16S rDNA, serves as a barcode of life to indicate which species are there and their prevalence in the microbial community," says Dr. Sodergren. Another approach included sequencing the DNA of entire microbial communities in a subset of samples. "With this information, we could identify viruses, fungi and other non-bacterial organisms and put together a catalog of all the genes present in the samples," Dr. Mitreva says.The researchers noted unique communities of microbes in every site in the body. Interestingly, the microbial communities that live on the teeth are different from those in saliva. And the most diverse collection of microbes was found to live on the skin, which might be expected because it is the body’s barrier to the outside world.The scientists also reported that the body’s collection of microbes contributes more gene activity to human health than humans themselves. While the human genome includes some 22,000 genes, it’s a mere fraction of the 8 million genes that are part of the human microbiome.Genes Critical to HealthThese microbial genes are critical to good health. Those in the gastrointestinal tract, for example, allow humans to digest foods and absorb nutrients that our bodies otherwise could not handle. Microbial genes also produce vitamins and compounds that naturally suppress inflammation in the intestine.Also, confirming earlier, smaller studies, the new research shows that components of the human microbiome clearly change during an illness. When a patient is sick or takes antibiotics, the species of the microbiome may shift substantially as one bacterial species or another is affected. Eventually, however, the microbiome settles into a steady state, even if the previous composition is not completely restored.As part of the Human Microbiome Project, the NIH funded a number of studies to look for links between particular communities of microbes in the body and illness. Results of some of this research, reported in PLoS, underscore the clinical applications of microbiome research to improve human health.Unexplained FeverAt Washington University, researchers led by Dr. Gregory Storch, Professor of Pediatrics, examined the microbes in the noses and blood of children who developed sudden, high fevers that couldn’t be traced to a specific cause. Unexplained fever is a common problem in children under age 3, and they are often treated with antibiotics as a precaution, which contributes to antibiotic resistance.Dr. Storch and his colleagues, including Dr. Kristine Wylie, a postdoctoral research associate at The Genome Institute, found that specimens from the sick kids contained more total viral DNA and more species of viruses, some of them potentially novel, than children without fever, who also were included in the study as a comparison.“We found things we did not expect to see,” says Dr. Wylie, including the discovery of astrovirus in the children with fever, a viral type that causes childhood diarrhea and one that had not been previously found in blood. The researchers also showed that children without fever carried viruses, though in lower numbers. They plan to follow up this work with the most extensive characterization of viruses to date of healthy people. Understanding the difference between viral infections with and without fever will be important in applying microbiome techniques in the clinic, the scientists say.New Unnamed MicrobesIn another project, Dr. Weinstock, Dr. Wylie and their colleagues, along with Dr. Katherine Pollard and her team at the University of California, San Francisco, identified previously unknown types of microbes in stool samples from 11 healthy individuals. Stool samples are among the most well-characterized of any from the Human Microbiome Project, yet the group was still able to discover new bacteria. While these new, not-yet-named microbes were found in relatively low levels, the research indicates they may be quite common because they were found in multiple volunteers.Life-Threatening Illness in PremiesAnd in research at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Dr. Phillip Tarr, Professor in Pediatrics, and neonatologist Dr. Barbara Warner, and others are investigating whether a life-threatening gastrointestinal illness in premature babies is linked to microbes in the intestinal tract. Necrotizing enterocolitis affects about 10 percent of premature babies, usually in the first month of life, and is fatal in 15 percent to 30 percent of cases. The researchers are collecting stool samples from premature babies to identify and quantify differences between the microbial communities of the infants who develop the illness and those who don’t. This information may provide a foundation for developing ways to prevent or cure the illness.NIH has funded a number of other medical studies using HMP data and techniques that TGI is involved in, including: the role of the gut microbiome in Crohn’s disease; the skin microbiome in acne; and the urogenital microbiome in sexually transmitted infections.“The future of microbiome research is very exciting,” Weinstock says. “This large-scale effort will open doors in many areas of medicine to improve our understanding of good health and the treatment and prevention of disease.”All the data collected on the human microbiome is uploaded to a central repository called the Data Analysis and Coordination center (Human Microbiome Project DACC) and is available for free to the scientific community.

Meet Hancock County Jane Doe.(Reconstruction Credits: Carl Koppelman (left) and Wesley Neville (right))She is only known as Jane Doe because authorities, ever since her death, have been unable to determine what her real name was. Hidden by the night, she was struck by a car that was traveling along a portion of Interstate 10 [1] near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. [2] At 10:40 a.m. on May 8, 1998, approximately 8 hours after she passed away, a truck driver found her body and reported the discovery to the police. When the people driving the vehicle that hit Jane Doe heard about what occurred, they said that they believed they had hit a deer. [1]An analysis of the unidentified woman’s body revealed several distinguishing marks and a description of her physical attributes. It also painted a bleak picture of what her life was like in the time before she passed away.She had several scars. One of these scars, a vaccination scar, was located on her left arm. A hysterectomy scar ran from her belly button to her pelvic regions. [1] The NamUs entry for Hancock County Jane Doe lists the vaccination scar and says that others were located in the abdominal region (“Surgical scars on abdomen”), most likely including the hysterectomy scar. [2] It was determined that she had given birth to at least 2 children. Pills were found in her pocket. [1]She was a white female with gray eyes (although gray eyes can be confused for blue eyes, as gray eyes are quite rare) and brown, curly hair that was 16–18 inches in length. It was dyed reddish-brown. She weighed between 130 and 135 pounds and was between 5 feet, 3 inches (160 centimeters) and 5 foot, 5 inches (165 centimeters). [1]She had black lung disease [1], caused by exposure to coal dust [3], emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and osteoarthritis in her spine. Her tanned skin had been bitten by bugs. Along with this, her legs, underarms, and nails were not well taken care of. She had no natural teeth, although it is possible that she had dentures. She had cysts in her ovarian region, which suggests that she had consumed unclean food that was contaminated with parasites. [1] All of these observations suggest that Jane Doe had fallen on hard times and resorted to living on the streets or another environment like it.People on online sleuthing forums like Websleuths have suggested potential matches for Jane Doe, including Terrie Lee Holland, who went missing from Arkansas in June of 1997, and Nelda Louise Hardwick, who went missing from Lake Charles, Louisiana in October of 1993. [4](Left: Terrie Lee Holland, Right: Nelda Louise Hardwick)Nelda Louise Hardwick seemed like a striking potential match for Jane Doe to both Websleuthers and the family of Hardwick. While her eye color was different (gray for Jane Doe vs. hazel for Hardwick), Hardwick had dentures and surgical scars and her physical description was very similar to that of the Jane Doe. When the family of Hardwick was shown pictures of Jane Doe’s body, they identified Hardwick as the Jane Doe. People were confident about the match; in fact, the coroner managing Jane Doe’s case stated that the chance of Hardwick not being Jane Doe was only 1 in 1,000. [5]Jane Doe was buried in the pauper section [6] of a cemetery in Diamondhead, Mississippi. [7] Nelda Hardwick’s children were determined to convince Hancock County officials to exhume the body of Jane Doe. They decided to take this matter to court in 2013. For months, family members of Hardwick fought to achieve this goal. The trial was very emotional; Hancock County Coroner Jim Faulk said that there “was not a dry eye” as they testified. [4 - the article this quote came from is now unavailable, but an excerpt from the article is provided on this Websleuths thread]. At one point, Hardwick’s niece was ordered to clean Jane Doe’s grave marker after she wrote Hardwick’s name on it. [8](Jane Doe’s gravestone after it was defaced by Hardwick’s niece)Eventually, a judge gave permission for Jane Doe’s body to be exhumed [6]. The exhumation, which was performed in December of 2013, went well until the body lying under the grave marker was found. Immediately, the volunteers digging to find Jane Doe noticed that something was wrong.The remains under the grave marker had teeth, but Jane Doe did not. The measurements of the remains did not match those of the Jane Doe as well.The remains were not those of Jane Doe. [6]Eventually, it was determined that the remains were those of an unknown male. Later, a judge ordered that no more exhumations were to occur in the Diamondhead cemetery. It has been speculated that Jane Doe’s headstone was moved from another location or Jane Doe is buried below the man. [9]Without DNA from Jane Doe, we may never know who she really is. Non-profit organizations, such as the DNA Doe Project, that use genetic genealogy (explained further at the bottom of this post - Oct. 4, 2019 edit) to identify John and Jane Does require DNA to begin their process. Hancock County Jane Doe may forever rest in that Diamondhead cemetery, with no name and little dignification. Thrown to the wayside, both figuratively and literally. Whether they belong to Nelda Hardwick or someone else, perhaps someone who was not reported missing because no one even knew she was missing, is unknown.This sort of mismanagement and improper placement of unidentified remains disgusts me.“Now, we may never be able to identify this woman.”said by Jim Faulk, Hancock County Coroner.Sources:[1] - The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) (A great resource for John and Jane Doe cases).[2] - http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/178ufms.html (Another amazing resource for these type of cases).[3] - Pneumoconiosis[4] - MS - MS - Hancock Co., WhtFem 178UFMS, 38-42, no teeth, 'black lung', May'98[5] - Nelda Louise Hardwick[6] - Why was Jane Doe not under her tombstone?[7] - Jane Doe (1955-1998) - Find A Grave Memorial[8] - No ruling on Jane Doe, but niece ordered to clean grave marker[9] - Judge orders exhumations in Jane Doe case to ceaseEdit (February 22, 2020): I changed some of my wording at the end of this answer to more reflect my thoughts on the situation described in this answer. I feel that this wording describes how I feel a bit better (that, in the case of unidentified remains, this irresponsible treatment of human remains, which, from an investigative standpoint, doubles as an invaluable tool to solve the case, both irrevocably damages the case and comes off as rather disrespectful to the family of the victim who are, hopefully, looking for their missing loved one).I do agree with the premise that if your family member passed away, and they desired to be buried in such a manner, that it would only be fair.An Expansion on Genetic Genealogy:I want to further explain the concept of genetic genealogy, as I neglected to expand upon what exactly this is, as the field is quite new and still developing rapidly.Genetic genealogy is, as far as I know, a quite new term. In a broad sense, genetic genealogy is a field of study that involves the use both DNA testing and historial records for various applications. It can be used to find relatives you were unaware of, your biological parents, support or prove your genealogy research, etc. However, in this small blurb, I will focus on the applications of genetic genealogy in the identification of John and Jane Does.DNA Doe Project (DDP), which is the non-profit I mentioned that uses genetic genealogy, has their own method for connecting unidentified people to their families (from there, law enforcement would confirm the identity of the victim by potentially asking for a DNA sample from a very close relative of the victim, like a parent or sibling, and seeing if the profiles of the unidentified person and the family member match; they could also use fingerprints and dental records if they are available).They begin with connecting with the law enforcement agency handling the case, who will provide them with a DNA sample from the body if it is available. If not, the body will have to be exhumed first to get DNA. Then, DDP will use the unidentified decedent’s DNA for a direct-to-consumer genetic testing kit, such as those provided by 23AndMe or Ancestry. When the results come back, DDP takes the raw information from the testing results and puts it into another program known as GEDMatch.GEDMatch contains the profiles of millions of people who have chosen to put their DNA results on the site in order to “provide applications for comparing your DNA test results with other people (from GEDMatch site).” When the decedent’s DNA profile is in GEDMatch, the profiles of many different people with varying degrees of DNA shared with the decedent are listed. From these listings, DDP can establish a family tree, gradually narrowing down to the close relatives of the decedent.From there, law enforcement will handle the rest, trying to find which member of the family is missing and conducting DNA tests or collecting non-DNA identifiers such as fingerprint records and dental records to compare to the unidentified decedent. If they match, then they have an identification. When said identification is legally confirmed, then the identity could be either released to the press or kept private at the family’s request.While every profile on GEDMatch was wholly accessible to law enforcement and DDP for comparison to unidentified decedents before, a relatively recent change to GEDMatch’s terms of service have made it optional to allow law enforcement and researchers to use your DNA profile for comparison to open/cold cases. This has drastically reduced the amount of profiles available to the DDP for research; however, as people are opting back in for their profiles to be used, the amount of matches is slowly increasing. Maybe, in the future, we’ll have enough profiles on GEDMatch (and enough opted-in ones) to allow for every decedent to be identified.While this is a personal opinion, I believe GEDMatch is a really exciting development for the research of these open/cold cases, and could solve many of them. If you’re up to it and already have the results of a direct-to-consumer genetic test with you, there are various videos online on how to upload your results to GEDMatch.

I wrote this 7 years ago when her book first came out in response to her article Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior . I wrote a follow up afterwards. My children have been quite successful and I don't hold to her theory AT ALL. Interestingly, my kids have become even more successful since I wrote this article.Original article I wrote hereWhy American Mothers are Superior…. I really did not have time to write this today, but two articles I read made me drop what I was doing. First was the Wall Street Journal article by a Yale law professor who says Chinese mothers are superior because they produce more mathematical and musical prodigies.The reason, she says, is because none of them accept a grade less than an “A”, all insist their child be number one in the class, they don’t let their children be in school plays, play any instrument other than piano or violin, etc.She says that this whole thing about people being individuals is a lot of crap (I’m paraphrasing a bit) and gives an example of how she spent hours getting her seven-year-old to play a very difficult piece on the piano. She uses the fact that the older daughter could do the same piece at that age as proof this was reasonable.There are a few areas I would take exception with her article. First is her grasp of mathematics and logic. It is clearly impossible that every child in China is number one in the class, unless every classroom in the country has a thirty-way tie for first. Second, as my daughter asked, “There are 1.3 billion people in China. None of them ever got a B?” Third is the issue of claiming your parenting is such a great success when your children are not yet out of high school.I don’t teach at Yale, but I do have a Ph.D., have published several articles in academic journals, founded two companies, and won a gold medal in the world judo championships. I raised three kids to adulthood. As for the companies, they paid enough to support the kids in what they wanted to do. That individualism crap?Well, the first one went to NYU at age 17, graduated at 20 and if you google Maria Burns Ortiz you’ll find everything from her acceptance speech as Emerging Journalist of the Year to her stories on Major League Baseball investments in Venezuela for ESPN to Fox News Latino. Plus, she has a good husband and she is a wonderful mother.She never took piano lessons but she is an amazing writer.The second daughter, the Perfect Jennifer, received her Masters and teaching credential from USC at 24, after taking a couple years off after her B.A. in History. She teaches at an inner city school in Los Angeles. This isn’t her fall back plan in a bad economy. This was her first choice profession and her first choice school. They are lucky to have her and she’s happy to have them.My third daughter was in the last two Olympics, won a bronze medal in Beijing and has now gone professional as a fighter in Mixed Martial Arts. Ironically, she was the one that played bassoon and attended a science magnet. She volunteers at a school in Watts where her older sister did her student teaching.And STILL, I would not venture to lecture other people on how superior my parenting skills are because a) there have been times when I could cheerfully have smacked each one of them with a two by four and only my maturity, Catholic faith and felony assault laws of the state of California stayed my hand and b) as Erma Bombeck said, no mother is arrogant because she knows that, regardless of her other accomplishments in life, at any moment she may get a call from the school principal saying that her child rode a motorcycle through the auditorium.If I got a call like that, I wouldn’t even be surprised. I would just reach for my credit card to give the principal the number over the phone and go searching the house for my two by four.The second article I read was by Vivek Wadhwa, in Business Week, who said that Chinese and Indian engineering programs graduate several times MORE students than the U.S. but the quality of these students is generally much poorer than American students.When I was in graduate school, I used to think arguments such as Wadhwa’s were just sour grapes from American students who couldn’t cut it, and their teachers who let them slack.Then, I graduated, became a professor for many years and an employer. I see exactly the differences Vivek describes between American and many international students.When I ask the latter questions such as,“If you were going to redesign programming language X, what would you do?”They will tell me what X does in great detail but not answer the question.American students are more likely to jump in with ideas about how to change X, replete with statements like “X sucks because…”My twenty-five years of experience, agrees with Wadhwa’s research findings in that the international students I have met are far less likely to question results. Of course this isn’t true of all of them. It’s silly to generalize to every member of a nation of a billion or half-billion people.American students remind me of the nursery rhyme:There was a little girlWho had a little curlRight in the middle of her foreheadAnd when she was goodShe was very, very goodAnd when she was badShe was horridMy husband is brilliant. This is why I married him. He went to UCLA on a National Merit Scholarship, double majored in math and physics and then went on to graduate work in physics. He taught himself Calculus in elementary school and then taught himself as much physics as he could before going to college. His parents pretty much let him do what he wanted to do, which was read physics books.My older brother has a degree in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. Like most of his friends, he majored in computer science because he was really interested in math and computers. When we were in college, around 1975, I saw my first “personal computer”. One of my brother’s friends had built it from parts.I’m a statistician because I really love statistics and fortunately for me, it pays money.In America, people in math, computer science and other sciences generally chose those fields because that is what they want to do. They have a genuine interest, to the point of passion, and will often spend crazy hours working in their labs.Chinese and other international students often spend crazy hours, too, but not as often for the same reasons. A lot of times it’s because of a language barrier – and they have my respect. I spent a year as a student in Japan. As a professor, I once taught a Directed Studies in Psychological Research course in Spanish. Functioning in a second language is damn hard.The international scholars I know, far more often than American ones, chose their field for practical reasons. They could get a job. The salaries were good. Their parents really wanted them to become a doctor/ engineer.Sometimes these Chinese (and other) students change while in America. Not always. Lots of middle managers like people to do exactly what they’re told. Not always the best thing for business but perhaps best for the comfort and convenience of that manager.Schools really like people to do what they are told, and universities just love having graduate students who will pay high out-of-state tuition, teach for low wages, or even work in the lab for free. Hey, don’t blame us if 30% of the students we admit are from other countries, they did the best on the tests AND had a 4.0 GPA. You should have studied more, you lazy slackers!Someone ought to ask WHY we are measuring what we measure. These tests we give, and the other admissions criteria were not handed down by God. (I know because I did my dissertation on intelligence testing. Most of these tests come from The Psychological Corporation, Pearson Education and the Educational Testing Service. God doesn’t work at any of those places. If you don’t believe me, call their switchboard and ask for God’s extension.)Why does it matter if your child is a musical prodigy? What the hell difference does it make if your child can play some complicated piece on the piano at age seven?My youngest daughter, the world’s most spoiled twelve-year-old, plays drums. She practices about an hour a week. She likes the drums. I want my daughter to play an instrument, if she is interested, because it might be something that brings her joy as an adult.She is on the student council and, this last report card, she brought home her first B+ in a year. We kind of grumbled about it, but that’s all. High achievement is important in life, but it is not all of life.WHY does it matter so much if you have a 4.0 GPA? I did not have the best behavior or GPA as either a high school student or undergraduate. Looking back, I wonder whatever possessed the admissions staff at Washington University in St. Louis to look at my SAT scores and overlook everything else, but I will be forever grateful that they did. I doubt many universities would admit a student like me today, particularly not at age 16.What I did have was an intense desire to learn about the world.As an undergraduate, I took a graduate course in economics because it sounded really interesting and asked the professor’s permission to enroll.He happened to have been chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (under Richard Nixon, but he was still a great professor nonetheless). I also took courses on Urban and Regional Economics where I got to see real-life applications of matrix algebra.My point (and by now you may have despaired of my ever having one) is that my undergraduate education gave me the gift of professors willing to respond to my interests, enough time not to interfere with my relationship with the library, and classmates I argued with for the pure intellectual exercise.When my youngest child is ready for college, I will look for a school that will give that to her. If it is an Ivy League school, that’s fine.Dr. Chua is raising her children to fit into the Ivy League mold.Me, I’m raising my children to be themselves and to mold the world to fit.How is that working out ….There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think several times, “I love my life.”So, it works well for me, and for my family, all the way down to the two-year-old granddaughter whose latest favorite saying is,“I a lucky kid!”(Well, right after, “Grandma, buy me an iPad for Chrissmas!” )Dr. Chua’s definition of success is to have children who are musical and mathematical prodigies.Mine is to have children who learn well, live well and love well.She’s a success by her standards as I am by mine.(But I still won’t be surprised if I get that call from the principal. )Here is the follow up to that postParenting: Nobody really knows what they’re doing