Microbial Treatments for the Mind

For $99, you can obtain a kit that includes two cotton swabs and instructions for properly collecting your own stool sample, along with oral and skin samples. Upon shipping those specimens to the Knight Lab in La Jolla, CA, you will join the ranks of "citizen scientist," becoming a contributor to the world's largest crowd-sourced microbiome research project. In return, should you have accepted this mission, you will receive a report that offers you a "snapshot" of the microbes found in your fecal matter, and compares it to that of the rest of the population.