From NewsObserver.com:
Researchers in Raleigh want to know what creatures have made themselves at home in human bellybuttons.
The team at N.C. State’s Belly Button Biodiversity project is finding that this often forgotten body part has a secret life of its own, holding worlds of bacteria and fungi that differ from person to person.
The outcome of the belly button biodiversity sampling has been posted on the website: http://www.wildlifeofyourbody.org/
You can locate Meg Lowman’s plate, by clicking on Bacteria Galleries, and looking for # 1443.
“They will be identifying microbes on individual plates with time. Because most of the microbes that live on us cannot be grown in culture, the actual diversity of the belly button samples is considerably greater than what is seen on the plates. As samples accumulate they will be sequencing the DNA from the microbe samples to identify these unculturable forms. Even without including these, it is clear that among the belly buttons sampled here there are dozens of species of microbes. You can see their different shapes, sizes, and colors. Because these microbes were all grown for approximately the same length of time, the differences in the size of colonies is a reflection of the rate the microbes grew and, also, the density of microbes in each belly button.”