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Recognition of the role of the microbiome in overall health has been one of the most important changes in our understanding of normal physiology. As efforts increase to modify the microbiome to promote better health, full understanding of the normal gut microbiome is essential. Four new studies provide perspectives on this issue.
Falony and collaborators collected fecal samples from 1106 Flemish individuals in a confined region of Belgium and 1135 individuals from the Netherlands. The researchers performed microbiome phylogenetic profiling for both groups and compared with U.S. and U.K. data sets to create a total population of 3948 well-characterized microbiome profiles in Western, developed countries. A core microbiota shared in 95% of sam…