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Human microbiome analysis is the study of microbial communities found in and on the human body. The goal of human microbiome studies is to understand the role of microbes in health and disease.
Traditionally, studying samples from human skin, stool, or blood relied on time- and labor-intensive microbiology techniques of growing and isolating individual organisms followed by phenotypic or genotypic analysis. Microbial community profiling within a single sample was not possible with these methods.
The advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS) enabled several high-profile collaborative projects including the Human Microbiome Project and MetaHIT, which have published a wide range of data on the human microbiome using NGS as a foundational tool.
The throughput and cost savings of NGS has fueled metagenomics studies capable of surveying the genomes of entire communities, including those of unculturable organisms.
See how Illumina NGS is being used to sequence complex microbial populations.
Dental calculus, the hard deposit the dentist scrapes off your teeth, is the only part of your body that fossilizes during your lifetime.
Illumina sequencers offer deep coverage to identify novel HPV types correlated with non-melanoma skin cancers.
The Saca La Lengua project is using NGS to identify the variety of bacteria and fungi that live in the human mouth.
