When a diagnostic lab furnishes normal ranges for certain microbes, is there any place to compare their ranges to what scientists are discovering is normal variability or adaptations?
Is there a central place to check how particular microbial populations may shift as an adaptation to something specific which has changed in their environment?
I would appreciate learning about any databases or other sources (even papers) that may address what diagnostic labs are calling abnormal in general tests of the fecal microbiome. Thanks.
Hi Susan,
This is a complex issue, there are many factors that influence the results. This is not a problem within a study (where DNA prep, amplification and sequencing is uniform) but does make it very difficult to generalize results between studies. I think the normal vs. abnormal designation is very much dependent on the particular lab rather than rather than an external "truth". There is no perfect set of primers etc. If I use the same faulty ruler there will be more feet in a mile than in a kilometer, but if I use my faulty ruler to measure a mile, and you use a different faulty ruler to measure a kilometer who knows what the results would be. Its been very difficult for the scientific community to accept a single method since all have some shortcomings that are not necessarily shared with others.
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