Osmoregulation and the human mycobiome

The last one-and-a half decades have made it amply clear that the human microbiota have a very significant role to play in health and disease. The human body can (or should) be better viewed as a complex ecosystem inhabited by micro-organisms that outnumber human cells 10 to 1 (Ley et al., 2006). However, most research in this field has been focused on the prokaryotic (specifically, bacterial) component of the microbiota. Sampling, in turn, is carried out mostly from sites that are readily accessible (Human Microbiome Project Consortium, 2012).