Teleport every one of yourselves into the next room and you'd leave a strange陌生的 shadow[C] 影子 behind. A ghostly幽灵的 cloud of single-celled creatures that live on and inside your body, your microbiome. Zoom急速上升 in and we can see that this cloud is made of bacteria细菌, fungi, and others. Like these in the gut内脏 that digest文摘 fiber纤维 and give us nutrients we can't make ourselves or these that munch用力咀嚼 our skin皮 oils and give off that characteristic典型的 body odor气味. Even甚至 the film of plaque匾 that we brush off our teeth was put there by microbes.
You're teeming with microscopic用显微镜可见的 life, or rather宁可 you were. Without you to sustain支撑 and contain包含 it, your microbiome is now rapidly快 dying. And without it, over in the next room, so are you. From your first day on earth, these microbes have helped build, protect保护, and feed喂(养) you. And on your last day, they'll be the first to take you apart相隔. When multicellular[生物] 多细胞的 life arrived on earth, microbes had been here for more than one and a half billion years. They were first.
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