Love Bugs

Your body is basically a bustling metropolis of 100 trillion microscopic residents - bacteria, viruses, and fungi - who've set up shop in specialized neighborhoods from your gut to your gums, skin to vaginal or urogenital, all working together like the world's most efficient city council you never voted for. These microbial communities don’t live rent-free; they're paying by handling everything from digestion and metabolism to immunity and mood regulation, essentially running your biological infrastructure while you're busy worrying about your Netflix queue. The microbiome market is exploding, with companies scrambling to figure out how to optimize the bugs within you in the development of supplements, clinical therapeutics and diagnostics that treat everything from C. diff infections to depression. It's the ultimate real estate boom, except instead of flipping houses, entrepreneurs are trying to flip your flora, and the question isn't whether location matters, but which bacterial neighborhood is worth the biggest investment.