Current understanding of the human microbiome

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2018-02-05Author
Gilbert, Jack A.
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Blaser, Martin J.
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Caporaso, J. Gregory
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Jansson, Janet K.
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Lynch, Susan V.
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Knight, Rob
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https://hdl.handle.net/1912/10315As published
https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.4517Abstract
Our understanding of the link between the human microbiome and disease, including obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis and autism, is rapidly expanding. Improvements in the throughput and accuracy of DNA sequencing of the genomes of microbial communities associated with human samples, complemented by analysis of transcriptomes, proteomes, metabolomes and immunomes, and mechanistic experiments in model systems, have vastly improved our ability to understand the structure and function of the microbiome in both diseased and healthy states. However, many challenges remain. In this Review, we focus on studies in humans to describe these challenges, and propose strategies that leverage existing knowledge to move rapidly from correlation to causation, and ultimately to translation.
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Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature Medicine 24 (2018): 392–400, doi:10.1038/nm.4517.