ABSTRACT
A major advantage for microbiome-seq is that samples do not have to be cultured prior to analysis, thus allowing scientists the ability to rapidly characterize the phylogeny and taxonomy of microbial communities that in the past were dicult or impossible to study. For example, bacteria, typically the most numerous microorganisms in biological samples, are extremely dicult to culture, with estimates that less than 30% of bacteria collected from environmental samples can actually be cultured. us, advances in NGS and bioinformatics have facilitated a revolution in microbial ecology. e newly discovered diversity and variability of microbiota within and between biological samples are vast. To advance further the discovery and characterization of the global microbiota, several large projects, including the Earth Microbiome Project (www.earthmicrobiome.org), MetaHIT (www.metahit.eu), and the Human Microbiome Project (www.hmpdacc.org), have been established. In addition to coordinating and advancing eorts to characterize microbial communities from a wide array of environmental and animal samples, these projects have standardized the protocols for sample isolation and processing. is is a critical step in microbiome-seq to ensure that the diversity and variability between samples is authentic and not due to dierences in the collection and handling of the samples. If a sample is not processed appropriately, the prole of the microbiota may not be representative of the original sample. For instance, if a stool sample is le at room temp and exposed to room air for even a short period of time, aerobic bacteria may continue to grow, while strict anaerobic bacteria will begin to die, thus skewing the taxonomic characterization of the sample. erefore, we strongly encourage you to review the guidelines for sample isolation and processing prior to initiating a microbiome-seq project.
