Rib cage
The rib cage is the arrangement of ribs attached to the vertebral column and sternum in the thorax of most vertebrates, that encloses and protects the heart and lungs. In humans, the rib cage, also known as the thoracic cage, is a bony and cartilaginous structure which surrounds the thoracic cavity and supports the shoulder girdle to form the core part of the human skeleton. A typical human rib cage consists of 24 ribs in 12 pairs, the sternum and xiphoid process, the costal cartilages, and the 12 thoracic vertebrae.
Human microbiota
As of 2014, it was often reported in popular media and in the scientific literature that there are about 10 times as many microbial cells in the human body as there are human cells; this figure was based on estimates that the human microbiome includes around 100 trillion bacterial cells and that an adult human typically has around 10 trillion human cells. In 2014, the American Academy of Microbiology published a FAQ that emphasized that the number of microbial cells and the number of human cells are both estimates, and noted that recent research had arrived at a new estimate of the number of human cellsapproximately 37.2 trillion, meaning that the ratio of microbial-to-human cells, if the original estimate of 100 trillion bacterial cells is correct, is closer to 3:1. In 2016, another group published a new estimate of the ratio being roughly 1:1 (1.3:1, with "an uncertainty of 25% and a variation of 53% over the population of standard 70-kg males").