Background Most studies describing the human gut microbiome in healthy and diseased
states have emphasized the bacterial component, but the fungal microbiome (ie, the�…

We have entered the Age of the Microbiome, with new studies appearing constantly and
whole journals devoted to the human microbiome. While bacteria outnumber other gut�…

Advances in genomics have significantly expanded our ability to examine human microbes.
These studies on the human microbiome are elucidating the integral relationships that hosts�…

Future Microbiol.(2012) 7 (11) 1236 future science group 1236 have on human health and
disease [7]. In 2010, Nelson et al. published the results of an initial reference genome study�…

Every May, Gastroenterology publishes a supple-mental thirteenth issue devoted to a topic
of particular interest and importance to both the practice and science of gastroenterology�…

From culture to metagenomics, within only 130 years, our knowledge of the human
microbiome has considerably improved. With> 1000 microbial species identified to date, the�…

1 Most cells in human body are microbial (almost 90%) and near a million microbial genes
are expressed within us compared to only about 20500 human genes. Each person's profile�…

Use of microbiome-based biomarkers in diagnosis, prognosis, risk profiling, and precision
therapy requires definition of a healthy microbiome in different populations. To determine�…

Studying the relationships between gut microbiota, human health, and diseases is a major
challenge that generates contradictory results. Most studies draw conclusions about the gut�…

As a result of next-generation sequencing methods, which have allowed for multiple parallel
sequencing [1], metagenomics has become a key method for the analysis of gut microbiota�…