Microbiome study allows participants access to own data

The following excerpts are from Medium reporter Ernesto Ramirez’s interview with Stanford University microbiome researcher Les Dethlefsen, whose Dynamics of Human Microbiota project aims to elucidate the human microbiome while promising study participants access to their own data.

Ernesto: Let’s talk about your study. You are asking participants to send microbiome data in the form of fecal matter and urine to your lab. What are you doing with those samples?

Les: We ask participants to provide both stool and urine samples. With the stool sample, we apply four different methodologies to turn it into data. One is the very common 16S ribosomal RNA (16S rRNA) gene sequencing approach. It’s relatively standard and inexpensive. It acts like an ID card for microbial taxa — telling us approximately what strains are present and in what relative abundance. We have a lot of data like that already for comparison.

Ernesto: If a participant is going to be contributing all of that data, will they have access to it?

Les: As someone with similar interests, I certainly knew that a huge motivation for people to join the study would be the access to their own data. We offer monetary compensation, but for the amount of time that will be spent in contributing samples, it is probably trivial. We knew we would attract the curious, scientifically inclined, and practising scientists. Of course, they would want to see their data.

The Institutional Review Board (IRB) was quite open to us sharing information with the participants about their own microbiota. It probably helped that there’s publicity about ways people can get this information. There is the American Gut project, offering an assessment of your microbiota for a donation, and uBiome, a private company offering the same kind of service.

Read full, original article: What’s in My Gut?

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