Microbe experts from around the world are setting up a formal collaboration to study the organisms that live in and on humans.

The International Human Microbiome Consortium, announced on 16 October, involves geneticists and bacteriologists from more than a dozen countries. The researchers will look at the role of the microbiome — the microorganisms that dwell in and on the body and that vastly outnumber the body's own cells — in health and disease.

The consortium's two most prominent projects are a five-year initiative funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to genetically sequence microbes living in the mouth, skin, nose, vagina and faeces; and a four-year, European Commission scheme to analyse the gut flora of people living in Spain and Denmark to find microbial links to obesity and inflammatory bowel disease.

The NIH has pledged US$115 million to the overall initiative and European collaborators have committed €20 million (US$27 million). Other countries will provide smaller sums.