Comparing the Healthy Nose and Nasopharynx Microbiota Reveals Continuity As Well As Niche-Specificity.

ABSTRACT: To improve our understanding of upper respiratory tract (URT) diseases and the underlying microbial pathogenesis, a better characterization of the healthy URT microbiome is crucial. In this first large-scale study, we obtained more insight in the URT microbiome of healthy adults. Hereto, we collected paired nasal and nasopharyngeal swabs from 100 healthy participants in a citizen-science project. High-throughput 16S rRNA gene V4 amplicon sequencing was performed and samples were processed using the Divisive Amplicon Denoising Algorithm 2 (DADA2) algorithm. This allowed us to identify the bacterial richness and diversity of the samples in terms of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs), with special attention to intragenus variation. We found both niches to have a low overall species rich

SUBMITTER: De Boeck I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5712567 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature