My life as a guinea pig for science

Reporting from the frontline often involves putting yourself under the microscope

I met Raes while making a film about the human microbiome for the new series of the BBC2 programme, Dara O Briain's Science Club. Among the many pleasures of talking to scientists for a living is that it's easy to volunteer to take part in some of their most cutting-edge experiments. In that spirit of scientific investigation, I had collected a sample of my own gut microbes some weeks before and sent them off to scientists to sequence the countless millions of bacteria within.

Scientists think that the microbiome will be crucial in working out why some people seem more susceptible than others to conditions such as diabetes, Crohn's disease or obesity. At University College Cork, I met neuroscientist John Cryan, who has been testing whether gut microbes could be linked to mood, behaviour or even autism.

Follow the link to the full article in the Guardian