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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 7, 2025

Applying Advanced In Vitro Culturing Technology to Study the Human Gut Microbiota

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Normal Gut Microbiomes in Diverse Populations: Clinical Implications.

Omprakash Shete¹, Tarini Shankar Ghosh¹

¹Department of Computational Biology, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi, New Delhi, Delhi, India;

Annual Review of Medicine

|November 18, 2024

Summary

Defining a healthy human microbiome is challenging due to underrepresentation in studies. Establishing population-specific references is crucial for developing targeted microbiome therapeutics and diagnostics.

Keywords:

gut microbiome industrialized countries metagenome mycobiome non-industrialized countries virome

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Area of Science:

Microbiome research
Human physiology
Therapeutic interventions

Background:

The human microbiome influences physiology and homeostasis.
Microbiome manipulation holds therapeutic promise.
Defining a 'healthy' microbiome is difficult due to study biases.

Purpose of the Study:

To review microbiome studies across diverse populations.
To identify common health-associated signatures and variation drivers.
To propose a roadmap for population-specific microbiome references.

Main Methods:

Literature review of microbiome studies.
Analysis of population-specific microbiome data.
Identification of commonalities and drivers of variation.

Main Results:

Health-associated microbiome signatures show commonalities across populations.
Significant drivers of microbiome variation exist.
Underrepresentation of minority groups and global regions impacts current definitions.

Conclusions:

Population-specific microbiome references are needed for tailored therapeutics.
Addressing biases in microbiome studies is essential.
A roadmap is proposed for developing customized microbiome diagnostics and therapeutics.