Your gut online

Sequences from a US government-funded program to paint a genomic picture of the human gut's complex ecosystem are going public for the first time since the effort started in 2008. Researchers sequenced thousands of samples taken from 300 healthy v

Written byBob Grant
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Sequences from a US government-funded program to paint a genomic picture of the human gut's complex ecosystem are going public for the first time since the effort started in 2008. Researchers sequenced thousands of samples taken from 300 healthy volunteers as part of the Human Microbiome Project, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health. The genomic information -- results from shotgun sequencing of 690 metagenomes from 300 individuals and targeted 16S sequencing of 5034 microbiomes -- appeared online last week. You can access the whole metagenome data here and the 16S reads here.

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Meet the Author

  • From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.

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