Question

Please TYPE your answer which covers all parts

Based on background* on the NIH Human Microbiome Project ( include parenthetical references to background information. )

A) What is it, and why is it important

B) How do they identify microbes for this project

C) Describe why bacterial identification is important

D) Briefly state your conclusion.

Answer 1

A. HMP is a project started in 2007 by NIH to help us to understand the diversity of microbial species residing in different parts of human body like skin, vagina, mouth,nasal passage etc. It gives an idea about differences between a healthy cohort vs diseased cohort. HMP has traced the gene expression, protein profile of these microbes in healthy and diseased cohort.

B. They gave performed gene sequencing from various body parts from human samples . They have also looked at the gene expression and protein expression profile of these healthy cohort as well as diseased cohort like crohn disease.

C.Bacterial identification based on gene sequencing and expression profiling will be useful to identify role if bacteria in being a cause or an effect if a disease . Ex: microbiome us different between a healthy cohort and a patient suffering from crohn s disease or HIV.

D. HMP will help us to not only identify bacteria causing disease but in long term may help us to find a solution like microbiome transplantation , ex: from a healthy individual to a patient suffering from severe diarrhea. It may also help us to understand whether microbiome alteration is the cause or effect of a disease .