Genetic Analysis co-develops HumGut – the world’s first complete database of reference genomes from the human gut microbiome

Molecular diagnostics specialist, Genetic Analysis AS has announced the first publication from the comprehensive HumGut microbiome database has appeared in the leading scientific journal Microbiome.

HumGut comprises a collection of about 30,000 genomes, covering the broad diversity of bacterial genomes found in the human gut. Unique to HumGut is that the genome collection has been filtered towards nearly 6000 metagenomes from healthy humans, classifying on average 95% of all metagenome reads and making it superior to all other genome collections. This work is funded by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) and GA with support from the Research Council of Norway through an Industrial Ph.D. program.

Knut Rudi, professor in microbiology, Faculty of Chemistry, Microbiology and Food Science (KBM), NMBU, and co-author of the paper commented: “The healthy human gut is now completely mapped. With this database, the field of microbiomics leaves behind the discovery phase and enters a new world of possibilities to find novel targets and bacteria panels to develop innovative solutions. We are confident that HumGut will add considerable value to research and development for both industry and academia.”

Accurate classification is essential in the development of targeted human gut microbiota diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. With a 95 % classification accuracy, HumGut has reached the milestone of being able to serve as a reference in these developments.

GA and NMBU envisage HumGut being used for meta-studies of the human gut in order to make new discoveries about the relationship between the microbiota and diseases. To facilitate this, the database will be made publicly available for any kind of research within the gut microbiome ecosystem.

Ronny Hermansen, CEO, Genetic Analysis added: “GA is proud to be an active participant of this important collaborative work with NMBU. To map and unlock the genes present in a healthy gut is instrumental for developing new diagnostics and better treatment regimes. GA will actively use this powerful search engine and database to identify novel gut signatures which we can plug onto our GA-map^® technology platform in order to develop new innovative diagnostic markers within the microbiome field.

GA will continue to sponsor the maintenance and upgrades of the database in the future.

For more of the latest science news, straight to your inbox, become a member of SelectScience for free today>>