10% Human: How Your Body’s Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness. Alanna Collen

– and microbes. Sharing such microbes may allow obesity to spread that little bit more easily.

      The final day of Dhurandhar’s experiment with the chickens arrived. For him, the results justified the sacrifices he and his family had made in leaving their lives and loved ones behind in India. Just as with the other virus, Ad-36 had made the infected chickens grow fat, whilst those given the alternative virus had remained lean. Dhurandhar was finally able to publish his discovery in the scientific literature, but many more questions lay ahead. Most importantly, did Ad-36 work the same way in humans? Could a virus be making people fat?