MGI Tech shared that a total of nearly 60,000 samples have been sequenced among 21 institutes and over 10 participating nations throughout Europe, as part of the Million Microbiome of Humans Project (MMHP) that was officially launched in 2019.
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The project was launched as a joint effort by the Karolinska Institute of Sweden, Shanghai National Clinical Research Center for Metabolic Diseases in China, the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, Technical University of Denmark, MetaGenoPolis at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) in France, and the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Center.
Relying on MGI's core DNBSEQ technology, MMHP aims to sequence and analyze microbial DNA from a million human samples to construct a microbiome map of the human body and build the world's largest human microbiome database.
"Countless studies have highlighted the importance of the microbiome in human health and disease. Yet, our knowledge of the composition of the microbiome in different parts of the body across countries, ages, sexes, and in relation to human health and disease remains limited," said Duncan Yu, President of MGI.
"Through MMHP, we are pushing forward microbial metagenomic research while empowering researchers within the microbiology community with access to MGI's innovative sequencing technology. Despite a brief interruption by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are delighted to see such a monumental milestone merely four years into the project."
Since the first description of human microbiome was published in 2010, the field of human microbiome has moved fast from sampling hundreds of individuals to thousands.
Advances in genome sequencing has enabled researchers to better characterize the composition of the microbiome through identification of unculturable microbes. It has also allowed them the opportunity to study how the microbiome influences the development of some cancers and drug responses.
Metagenomics, coupled with high-throughput sequencing technologies, have revolutionized microbial ecology.
Today, metagenomic sequencing has become both a powerful and popular tool for identifying and classifying complex microbial communities.
It facilitates accelerated discovery of new markers that translate to virulence or antibiotic resistance, as well as de novo discovery and characterization of novel species and assembly of new genomes.
Besides human microbiome, it is highly applicable in agricultural microbiome studies, environmental microbiome studies, pathogen surveillance and identification, and monitoring of antimicrobial resistance genes.
"Microbiomics will be part of precision medicine in the future, and data from the microbiome biobank that will result from MMHP will be leveraged for therapeutic R&D," said Professor Stanislav Dusko Ehrlich of University College London, UK.
"With 21 public and private institutions and 10+ countries currently involved in MMHP, we are actively looking for more research groups to take part in this landmark international microbiological research partnership and help generate the world's biggest free-access human microbiome database." ■