Current Status and Prospects of Intestinal Microbiome Studies

and many other diseases.This article reviews important facts about gut microbiota, highlighting both the current status and future prospects of microbiome research. ANALYSIS OF INTESTINAL MICROBIOMEThe gut microbiome is a community of microbes, which lives in the gastrointestinal tract, the microbiome being the sum of all microbial organisms that live in or on the host.It includes bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea.Metagenomic analysis refers to the structural and functional studies of this gut microbial society. 2 Early efforts in characterizing the gut microbiome were limited to those microbes that were cultivable in vitro, limiting the verifiable bacteria to few hundreds.Recent advances in sequencing technologies and computational biology have led to easier use of metagenomic approaches for characterizing microbial communities, which led to profound activities for microbiome or metagenomic researches in the gut.These advances allowed for large-scale studies, such as the Metagenomics of the Human Intestinal Tract (MetaHIT) project, 3,4 and the Human Microbiome Project (HMP).5,6 These studies were instrumental in in- Current Status and Prospects of Intestinal Microbiome Studies