Multiple studies have analysed the composition of the human gut microbiota using culturing and sequencing methods, but a comprehensive catalogue remains elusive. A new study used 13,133 human gut metagenomic data sets from 75 different studies and reconstructed 92,143 metagenome-assembled genomes from 11,850 human gut microbiomes. Further analysis revealed 1,952 uncultured candidate bacterial species currently absent from high-quality human-specific databases, expanding phylogenetic diversity of the known species repertoire by 281%. The data also improve classification by >200% of less-well-studied samples from Africa and South America. In addition, the new candidate species contain a multitude of new biosynthetic gene clusters and have distinct functional repertoires.
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Almeida, A. et al. A new genomic blueprint of the human gut microbiota. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-0965-1 (2019)
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Thoma, C. Substantial expansion of the human gut microbiota genome catalogue. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 16, 198 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41575-019-0129-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41575-019-0129-7
