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 yawcult.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 60-second science.

I'm Cynthia Graber. Got a minute?

Microbial organisms live in you, on you, in soil, in clouds, and below the ocean floor.

That last batch of single-celled critters is particularly hard to study. Not only are the samples

difficult to obtain, but they can easily be contaminated with all that other microbial

life once we dig them up. So researchers had to take special precautions when they investigated

microbial life in a coal bed deep below the seafloor near Japan. This material was once dry land,

but got submerged some 20 million years ago. The research team drilled nearly 2,500 meters below

the seafloor and brought up samples.

They carefully avoided contamination and evaluated only the inner portions of the samples, which

were protected by the outer parts. Analysis found life tenaciously holding on well under the ocean.

A gram of rich garden soil can hold a billion bacteria. At 2,500 meters below the seafloor,

a gram of sediment might be home to just a single microbe. And those deeply buried organisms

are quite different from microbes to be found just under the seafloor. In that deep layer,

the microbes are most closely related to bacterial groups that thrive in forest soils on land.

The scientists thus suggest that the deeply buried undersea microbes might be descendants

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