Scientists have been mining gut Bacteria to combat a variety of digestive disorders, including using fecal matter to cure Clostridium difficult infections (known to kill as many as 14,000 people in the US each year). Yet few have given much thought to exploring the hidden resources of the nose until now.

Although there are numerous colonies of bacteria in our noses and throats that can lead to common staph infections, pneumonia, H flu, sinusitis, and streptococcus, there are also those that are beneficial. However, as Michael Benninger, MD, chairman of the Head and Neck Institute at Cleveland Clinic, the overuse of antibiotics has “changed the colonies in our nose to bacteria that are more harmful.”

Despite the close proximity of the throat and nose, scientists including those from the Harvard Medical School, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, San Francisco has uncovered distinct differences in their individual bacterial populations.

For instance while the majority of microbes living in the nose have been categorized as from the Phyla Firmicutes and Actinobacteria and were comparable to other parts of the body including the skin, largest amount of bacteria in the throat are reportedly of the phyla Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes and the distribution was more similar to that found in saliva.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Tubingen in Germany have recently discovered that bacteria found in the nose that carries the pathogen Staphylococcus aureus may offer a cure for MRSA and other drug-resistant infections of the skin and soft tissue in other parts of the body. MRSA, which is generally contracted in hospitals and nursing homes, sickens more than 90,000 patients annually.

Although nobody is quite sure how it works, Bernhard Krismer, a bacteriologist at Tubingen said that lignin produced by the bacteria staphyloccus lugdunensis has been found to possess an “unusual cyclic peptide which includes 5 amino acids,“ proven to be effective in killing off S. aureus and other drug-resistant human pathogens including Enterococcus and others resistant to vancomycin (a (last-resort antibiotic). In addition, lab tests done on mice offered promise that S. lugdunensis could be used as a probiotic to prevent S. aureus from ever gaining a foothold inside people.

In fact, study author Andreas Peschel recently told the Los Angeles Times that results from the German tests suggest that the microbiomes (microbes that live on and/or in our bodies) may very well be “an untapped well of new antibiotics.” Until now, the majority of antibiotics have been isolated from bacteria living in the soil.

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