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April 20, 2011

First Blood Type, Now Gut Bacteria Type

Carl Zimmer, New York Times


AP Photo

In the early 1900s, scientists discovered that each person belongs to one of four blood types. Now they’ve discovered a new way to classify humanity: by bacteria. Each human being is host to thousands of different species of microbes. Yet a group of scientists now report just three distinct ecosystems in the guts of people they have studied.

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TAGGED: human microbiome, bacteria, gut flora, enterotype

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