Some scientists have suggested that individual human beings can be thought of as "superorganisms"; as a typical human digestive system contains 1013 to 1014 microorganisms whose collective genome, the microbiome studied by the Human Microbiome Project, contains at least 100 times as many genes as the human genome itself.
有些科学家提出，人类个体可视为“超个体”；因为一个典型的人体消化系统包含1013至1014个微生物，其宏基因组（“肠道微生物组”）载有的基因数量至少是人类基因的100倍（参见人类肠道微生物组项目）。