360X more bacterial than human genes in the body – June 2012

NIH Human Microbiome Project defines normal bacterial makeup of the body

Genome sequencing creates first reference data for microbes living with healthy adults

kurzweilai June 15, 2012
Highlights
200 researchers, 80 institutions, 5 years,
5,000 DNA samples, 3.5 terabases,
10,000 microbial species

Comments by VitaminDWiki

• Expect that vitamin D will be very involved in the future, but there was not mention of vitamin in either publication
• Fungi in the body have additional DNA as do some virus

PDFs are attached at bottom of this page

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The Human Microbiome Project Consortium

Nature 486, 215–221 (14 June 2012) doi:10.1038/nature11209
Received 02 November 2011 Accepted 10 May 2012 Published online 13 June 2012

A variety of microbial communities and their genes (the microbiome) exist throughout the human body, with fundamental roles in human health and disease. The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Human Microbiome Project Consortium has established a population-scale framework to develop metagenomic protocols, resulting in a broad range of quality-controlled resources and data including standardized methods for creating, processing and interpreting distinct types of high-throughput metagenomic data available to the scientific community. Here we present resources from a population of 242 healthy adults sampled at 15 or 18 body sites up to three times, which have generated 5,177 microbial taxonomic profiles from 16S ribosomal RNA genes and over 3.5 terabases of metagenomic sequence so far. In parallel, approximately 800 reference strains isolated from the human body have been sequenced. Collectively, these data represent the largest resource describing the abundance and variety of the human microbiome, while providing a framework for current and future studies.
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Structure, function and diversity of the healthy human microbiome

The Human Microbiome Project Consortium
AffiliationsContributionsCorresponding author
Nature 486, 207–214 (14 June 2012) doi:10.1038/nature11234
Received 02 November 2011 Accepted 16 May 2012 Published online 13 June 2012

Studies of the human microbiome have revealed that even healthy individuals differ remarkably in the microbes that occupy habitats such as the gut, skin and vagina. Much of this diversity remains unexplained, although diet, environment, host genetics and early microbial exposure have all been implicated. Accordingly, to characterize the ecology of human-associated microbial communities, the Human Microbiome Project has analysed the largest cohort and set of distinct, clinically relevant body habitats so far. We found the diversity and abundance of each habitat’s signature microbes to vary widely even among healthy subjects, with strong niche specialization both within and among individuals. The project encountered an estimated 81–99% of the genera, enzyme families and community configurations occupied by the healthy Western microbiome. Metagenomic carriage of metabolic pathways was stable among individuals despite variation in community structure, and ethnic/racial background proved to be one of the strongest associations of both pathways and microbes with clinical metadata. These results thus delineate the range of structural and functional configurations normal in the microbial communities of a healthy population, enabling future characterization of the epidemiology, ecology and translational applications of the human microbiome.

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