Our Science

Your microbiome is the myriad of microorganisms that colonize your skin, your gut, and every surface of your body. It contributes to your natural defenses — conditioning your immune system — and is a source of the biomolecules that keep you healthy.

Our research has revealed that, as compared with the ancestral human microbiome, which was optimized over millions of years, our modern skin microbiome has lost almost 80% of its microbial diversity. Along with this loss of microbes, we have reduced our capacity to produce many essential nutrients, including vitamins A, D, E, and K, as well as phytosterols and CoQ10, that once naturally existed on our skin, contributing to our resilience in responding to stress. In turn, we have compromised our ability to combat the environmental and lifestyle stressors of the modern world.

By leveraging plants from our ancestral symbiome, we strive to repair these broken connections to our environment. We are replacing beneficial metabolites — vitamins, nutrients, and essential fatty acids that once kept our skin healthy.