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. 2019 Jun 12;17(1):48.
doi: 10.1186/s12915-019-0667-z.

Multiple levels of the unknown in microbiome research

Andrew Maltez Thomas  1 , Nicola Segata  2
Affiliations

Multiple levels of the unknown in microbiome research

Andrew Maltez Thomas et al. BMC Biol. .

Abstract

Metagenomics allows exploration of aspects of a microbial community that were inaccessible by cultivation-based approaches targeting single microbes. Many new microbial taxa and genes have been discovered using metagenomics, but different kinds of "unknowns" still remain in a microbiome experiment. We discuss here whether and how it is possible to deal with them.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
The current knowns and unknowns in the human microbiome. Numbers of known and unknown members of the human gut microbiome taken from a population-wide and multi-bodysite large-scale metagenomic assembly study [2]. Numbers marked with asterisks refer to genes from the Integrated Gene Catalogue (IGC) of the human gut microbiome and are derived from human fecal samples and mapping to the eggNOG database [3]
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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