These viruses, however, are not the kind that will give you the common cold or flu (or worse). It’s amazing how much untapped biodiversity is all around us.”The study identified more than 600 viruses found in the samples taken from showerheads and toothbrushes. And for every bacterium, there’s potentially tens or hundreds or even thousands of viruses that infect it,” Hartmann said, noting that viruses mutate very quickly, too. She hypothesized that a bacterium in your mouth could transfer to your toothbrush, taking its viruses with it – and these could keep evolving on the toothbrush. “Microbes are everywhere all the time … We wouldn’t be able to digest our food or fend off infection if we didn’t have our microbes,” Hartmann said.

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Persons: Erica Hartmann, we’ve, ” Hartmann, Bacteriophages, “ There’s, ”, Joe Parker, wasn’t, Hartmann, Parker, toothbrushes, There’s, that’s Organizations: CNN, Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, Getty, World Health Organization, Innovation Locations: showerheads, Microbiomes, United States, ”