For the last seven years, Michael Snyder has meticulously tracked his microbiome, monitoring how much glucose and how many proteins from immune cells were in his blood and which bacteria were living in his nose and gut — as he became diabetic, got his diabetes under control, and then lost that control.
And now, that research on his own gut — and similar tracking for more than 100 other participants in a major study he led as part of the NIH-backed Human Microbiome Project — is being made public this week in Nature and Nature Medicine, along with two other major microbiome analyses.
Together, the three new datasets examine the microbiome’s impact on diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, and preterm births. And the landmark release of the data could serve as the foundation for a new wave of more precise, individualized research about how each person’s particular microbiome interacts with the rest of the body.
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