Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years. Yacold also

partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for

gut health, an investigator-led research program. To learn more about Yachtold, visit yacolt.co.com.j,

that's Y-A-K-U-L-T dot-C-O-J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

This is Scientific American 60-second science. I'm Cynthia Graber. Got a minute?

Some people donate their bodies to medical science upon their deaths so that medical students can learn anatomy.

Now researchers have come up with new ways that individuals can contribute their bodily information to medicine while they're still alive.

A nonprofit at Harvard called the Personal Genome Project

lets you share your genome sequence and health data for the use of researchers around the

world. And scientists at Harvard, NYU, and UC San Diego have teamed up to spin off what they're

calling the Open Humans Network. This new venture has developed two projects so far. The first,

called American Gut, allows you to contribute

data about your gut microbiome, a hot topic of research. The second, called Go Viral, lets you

donate easy to collect specimens when you have the flu or flu-like symptoms. The goal is to

greatly expand existing medical databases and to share them, to speed up understanding of diseases and development

of treatments. Privacy is certainly an issue. The project has built-in security measures, but

participants are alerted about potential risks in sharing such information. There's been a decline

in recent years of volunteers for medical studies. The scientists behind the Open Humans Network

hope this new project will

encourage more people to provide their health data to advance medical research. For information,

go to www.openhumans.org. Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American 60 Second Science,

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