by Jam­mal Abu-khazneh and Chih-Kai Yang — The skin is the largest or­gan in the hu­man body and is home to di­verse mi­cro­bial com­mu­ni­ties. While this may be un­set­tling for some ger­mo­phobes, re­cent work has un­cov­ered po­ten­tial health ben­e­fits from bac­te­ria that are part of our nor­mal skin mi­cro­bio­mes.