India, Dec. 26 -- Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, andAll India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have developed aningestible devicethat can sample bacteria directly from the small intestine, opening a new window into the human gut microbiome.

Existing tools are invasive, such as endoscopy or ileostomy, or indirect, relying on stool samples that do not truly reflect conditions higher up in the digestive tract.

"To say there is a hidden universe of living microbes in our body is no exaggeration but a scientific reality - we call it thehumanmicrobiome. Just as we send rovers to explore outer space, we need miniaturized devices to explore the inner space of the human body," explained Prof. Sarvesh Kumar Sr...