Over 100 bacterial species isolated from human gut microbiome for the first time

Researchers have compiled the most comprehensive collection of human intestinal bacteria to date, isolating over 100 new bacterial species from healthy individuals. It is hoped this resource could help further investigations into the microbiome in health and disease.

The study, published recently in Nature Biotechnology, collected fecal samples from 20 individuals from the UK and Canada. The researchers grew and DNA-sequenced 737 individual bacterial strains from these samples, with analysis highlighting 273 separate bacterial species including 173 that had never previously been sequenced and 105 species that had never previously been isolated.