Microbiome Gazers Episode 3

This is the third episode of the 'Microbiome Gazers'. Proudly hosted and organized by BugSpeaks® and Leucine Rich Bio.

Here Co-founders of Leucine Rich Bio Dr Debojyoti Dhar [as guest] and Mr Kumar Sankaran [as host] talk about the technologies – both sequencing and computational analysis – used within the field of microbiome.

Highlights:

• They begin with a brief comparison between the traditional microbiology / culture based approached and modern microbiome-based methodology.
• Factors involved in culturing-based methods and the associated drawbacks, especially regarding the inability to culture close to 2000 plus species that might thrive in a gut.
• Early technological walkthrough from Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization (FISH) to early PCR based amplicon sequencing, and other DNA based sequencing methods.
• About current technologies used – Amplicon [mostly rRNA] sequencing, whole genome metagenomics.
• Quick insights on meta-transcriptomics technology.
• Differences between using short read vs long read sequencing technologies.
• Details on various analysis platforms or suites available for analysing the metagenomic data, with a general follow through of major steps involved during a metagenomics analysis.
• Thoughts on the criticality of sample collection and extraction of DNA/RNA, and its impact on bioinformatic analysis.
• Thoughts on the criticality of reference databases.
• Thoughts on MetaRich - Leucine Rich Bio’s suite of metagenomic analysis suite, with specific focus on MetaRef [Microorganism reference database], MicroByte [database of associations between diseases and microbiome] and NutriBite [ database of associations between nutrition and microbiome].
• They wrap up by answering questions from attendees.