Profiling of vaginal microbial communities in Chilean women via self-sampling and nanopore sequencing.

ABSTRACT: The vaginal microbiota is a dynamic ecosystem that plays a central role in women's reproductive health, with Lactobacillus species typically dominating in healthy individuals. Disruptions to this microbiota can lead to dysbiosis, increasing susceptibility to infections such as bacterial vaginosis and contributing to adverse reproductive outcomes. Despite growing global interest in vaginal microbiome research, studies in Latin American populations remain limited, particularly in Chile. In this exploratory study, we aimed to characterize the vaginal microbiota of Chilean women using a combination of self-sampling and full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing with Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT). We implemented a customized bioinformatic pipeline using the Emu classifier to achieve species-leve

SUBMITTER: Oliva-Arancibia B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12623943 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature