The human microbiome

The human microbiome includes bacteria, viruses, and small eukaryotes, such as fungi, and this chapter focuses on the bacterial members of the microbiome. The Human Microbiome Project (HMP) aims at developing tools and resources for characterization of the human microbiota and to relate this microbiota to human health and disease. The goals of the jumpstart phase have been to sequence 900 reference genomes to provide a catalog of genomes for metagenomic studies, to sample at least 300 healthy adults between 18 and 40 years of age at five body sites, and to develop sequencing and analysis protocols for the samples derived from human subjects. The second phase of the HMP includes human microbiome studies that target particular disease states. In a recent study, four phyla comprised 92.3% of bacterial DNA sequences analyzed from multiple human sources, including hair, oral cavity, skin, genitourinary, and gastrointestinal tract. A study by Pei et al. showed that the distal esophageal microbiomes of four adults had compositions similar to that of the oropharynx, with the exception that no spirochetes were found in the esophagus. The chapter concludes by highlighting that pathogen discovery efforts will be enhanced by new metagenomics strategies, and these studies may uncover single etiologic agents of infections as well as relative shifts in groups of bacterial pathogens that may contribute to human disease.