American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research

McDonald D, Hyde E, Debelius JW, et al. American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research. mSystems. 2018;3(3):e00031-18

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Placing changes in the microbiome in the context of the American Gut. We accumulated samples over sequencing runs to demonstrate the structural consistency in the data. We demonstrate that while the ICU dataset (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27602409) falls within the American Gut samples, they do not fall close to most samples at any of the body sites. We then highlight samples from the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States and other countries to show that nationality does not overcome the variation in body site. We then highlight the utility of the American Gut in meta-analysis by reproducing results from (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20668239) and (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23861384), using the AGP dataset as the context for dynamic microbiome changes instead of the HMP dataset. We show rapid, complete recovery of C. diff patients following fecal material transplantation and also contextualized the change in an infant gut over time until it settles into an adult state. This demonstrates the power of the American Gut dataset, both as a cohesive study and as a context for other investigations