Emerging tools for understanding the human microbiome

Abstract

Recent advances in sequencing technologies, experimental protocols and approaches in data generation and analysis have enabled us to investigate the human microbiome at an unprecedented level of resolution. The current chapter aims to provide an understanding of the different computational and bioinformatic strategies adopted to answer the different questions of a typical microbiome investigation and how the upstream DNA sequencing methodologies can affect this. The chapter enlist the state-of-the-art in metagenomic data analysis along with the available strategies to perform an integrated investigation of the human microbiome along with other data layers.

Keywords: Growth rate; Integrated OMICs in the microbiome; Long read sequencing; Machine learning; Metagenome informatics; Strain investigation; Taxonomic classification.