Your individual microbiome is always in flux, influenced by your environment and genes. A team of researchers say the makeup of our bacterial communities start forming right from birth—babies pick up bacteria as they pass through the birth canal. Reporting in Nature Medicine, microbiologist Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello and her team swabbed babies born via C-section with maternal microbes to see if they could restore these missing bacteria. Dominguez-Bello discusses the role of these organisms.
