Microbiome

This article is a stub. You can help the Personal Science Wiki by expanding it.

All the little organisms that live on in and around you! See Probiotics and Prebiotics.

Microbiome Testing

Rapidly plummeting costs for gene sequencing have made microbiome tests cheap enough for regular self-testing. Broadly speaking, there are two major technologies commonly used in direct-to-consumer tests:

(1) "16S", so-called because it involves sequencing the 16S mRNA gene common to all bacteria. Sequencing only a portion of the microbial genome is much cheaper -- often as low as US$20 -- but comes with a tradeoff in precision. In particular, 16S techniques are generally accurate only at the genus or higher level.

(2) "whole genome sequencing" or WGS, sequences all microbial genes and is much more accurate, able to distinguish among different bacterial strains. Prices generally start at US$200.

Dozens of microbiome testing companies are available including

• Viome
• Ombre https://www.ombrelab.com/ (formerly known as Thryve)

Linked content on this wiki

(The content in the table below is automatically created. See Template:Topic Queries for details. If newly linked pages do not appear here, click on "More" and "Refresh".)

Tools related to this topic

Self researchers related to this topic
Richard Sprague Damien Blenkinsopp, Fah Sathirapongsasuti, Karl Heilbron, Ralph Pethica, Mark Moschel, Justin Lawler, James McCarter, Mikey Sklar, Michael Snyder