Study of the Vagina

"The microbiome starts to grow at birth, said Lita Proctor, program director for the Human Microbiome Project. As babies pass through the birth canal, they pick up bacteria from the mother’s vaginal microbiome."


NYT or here.

"The number of reads generated permitted saturating or near-saturating analysis of samples of the vaginal microbiome."

arXiv


I saw my son come out of my wife's birth canal, in our house in Puebla, so I know he is protected by her microbes.

The 2010 article linked above, from the Los Alamos electronic repository, presents studies of that magical canal.