Application of phylogenetic microarrays to interrogation of human microbiota

Human-associated microbiota is recognized to play vital roles in maintaining host health, and it is implicated in many disease states. While the initial surge in the profiling of these microbial communities was achieved with Sanger and next-generation sequencing, many oligonucleotide microarrays have also been developed recently for this purpose. Containing probes complementary to small ribosomal subunit RNA gene sequences of community members, such phylogenetic arrays provide direct quantitative comparisons of microbiota composition among samples and between sample groups. Some of the developed microarrays including PhyloChip, Microbiota Array, and HITChip can simultaneously measure the presence and abundance of hundreds and thousands of phylotypes in a single sample. This review describes the currently available phylogenetic microarrays that can be used to analyze human microbiota, delineates the approaches for the optimization of microarray use, and provides examples of recent findings based on microarray interrogation of human-associated microbial communities.