Sarkis Mazmanian started college at the University of California Los Angeles as an English major, with dreams of becoming a poet. He soon "realized that it wasn't something that I could make a living at," he says, and decided to turn to biology instead. "Trying to understand evolution and nature was really appealing to me," he recalls. He started studying pathogenic bacteria, the dominant area of interest in microbiology at the time. Now a professor at the California Institute of Technology, Mazmanian explores the role of bacteria in the development of the immune system. In The Microbial Health Factor, he and Sara McBride—a senior research technician in his lab—discuss the "intricate interactions" between those symbiotic bacteria that live in the mammalian gut and their animal hosts.
"I always liked science, but I was not a lab rat," says Megan Scudellari. "I hated everything about the lab." Then she entered the ...
