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 Yachtolt, visit yacolp.co.

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

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

There's a lot of advertising mythology about what causes dandruff, like this.

Here's why clean scalp is important. Your hair roots must breathe, or there's trouble,

deep trouble, dandruff. Flakes of dry... Dandruff itself is actually a very, very complicated condition.

Microbiologist and molecular biologist Barry Murphy, of Unilever in the UK, says dandruff

is a perfect storm of flakiness, involving your fungal microbiome, the health and oiliness

of the skin on your scalp, even weather.

His team set out to investigate the microbial component.

They sequenced DNA from the heads of people with healthy hair and from others with dry

dandruffy scalps, none of whom had used anti-dandruff shampoo within the last six months.

As previous studies have found, they spotted 10 times as much of a type of fungus called

malicexia on dandrophy scalps versus the

healthy cohort. But they also found that populations of a bacterium called Staphylococcus

capitis spiked on flaky scalps. Really, really interestingly, we found that there was approximately

a hundred times more of this bacteria on a dry or a dandruff scalp than there was on a healthy scalp.

But it's still a mystery why it's there, or what it's doing. The results are in the journal Plus One.

Murphy's employer Unilever makes its own anti-dandruff products, so this could be useful information someday.

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