西亚试剂：Project problems

Since a 2005 workshop in Paris, at least eight programmes have been established to study the human microbiome. These include the US Human Microbiome Project, the Canadian Microbiome Initiative, MetaHIT (involving the European Union and China) and the Human Metagenome Consortium in Japan.

These initiatives have generated vast amounts of data that are not easily comparable. For example, many studies on human microbiota identify species (or operational taxonomic units) and map evolutionary relationships using the 16S ribosomal RNA gene. Differences between the primers (which provide a starting point for the DNA synthesis) used to amplify this gene can have a big effect on the sequence data ultimately obtained. And estimates of species numbers can vary by two to three orders of magnitude, even when applied to the same sample, because different software packages are being used to analyse the amplified genes⁷.

This lack of consistency in approaches means that effective comparisons and interpretations of human microbiota studies are often not possible. The International Human Microbiome Consortium, established in 2008, and the International Human Microbiome Standards project, launched in 2011, have attempted to address some of these issues. But, especially in the case of the standards project, many national research projects were already well under way. Both initiatives are struggling with issues about data sharing and differences between national policies in ownership and property rights.

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