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Learning and Microbes Lets start from a simple fact Each person shelters about 100 trillion microbes But scientists cannot rear a vast majority of these bacteria in their labs to identify them and learn their characteristics. The implication is staggering. For example, Are people, as a result of their microbe hosting difference, require, favor, or demand different ways of learning? Do our brains influenced in any way by this difference? In the early 1900s, scientists discovered that each person belonged to one of four blood types. Now they have 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. Its an important advance, said Rob Knight, a biologist at the University of Colorado, who was not involved in the research. Its the first indication that human gut ecosystems may fall into distinct types. The researchers, led by Peer Bork of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, found no link between what they called enterotypes and the ethnic background of the European, American and Japanese subjects they studied. Nor could they find a connection to sex, weight, health or age. They are now exploring other explanations. One possibility is that the guts, or intestines, of infants are randomly colonized by different pioneering species of microbes. The microbes alter the gut so that only certain species can follow them. | 
