Four microbial features distinguish the the microbiome of the starred person from the microbiomes of four other people.PNAS, E.A. FRANZOSA ET AL.
People harbor distinctive sets of microbes, the genetic signatures of which can be used to identify individuals participating in the Human Microbiome Project, according to work published today (May 11) in PNAS.
“Each of us personally has a specific set of bugs that are an extension of us, just the same way that our own genome is a part of what defines us,” said coauthor Curtis Huttenhower, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health.
The study suggests that microbiome sequencing may someday have utility in criminal investigations, for example, but it also raises questions about how microbiome sequence data should best be handled to protect the privacy of study participants.
Researchers previously showed that they could differentiate between small groups of individuals who ...
