Unconventional
There are about 8 billion people living on our planet today. It's a lot. But consider the following: one human body harbours about 380 trillion viruses and 39 trillion bacteria - both on our skin and underneath it. That means there are thousands of times more organisms living off one of us than there are humans living off the whole Earth. So, as you stroll down a snow-clad path on a crisp and sunny winter's afternoon, thinking how wonderful it sometimes is to be alone, from a purely biological point of view you are not. Your body is literally teeming with organisms that use you as convenient terrain to reproduce, multiply and spread. The great majority of these organisms - viruses, bacteria and fungi - belong to what is called our microbiome. Over the years, we have formed some kind of understanding with our microbiome, and we all get on together fairly well on a give and take basis. As an illustration, the sum of viruses we carry, our virome, is thought to have an overall role in keeping our immune system alert. In this light, scientists recently discovered a novel immune strategy used by our brain cells to prevent the herpes virus from infecting them. The mechanism involves a protein known as TMEFF1.