Your Microbiome Has A Unique 'Fingerprint'
Monday, May 11, 2015 - 23:40
in Biology & Nature
A new study shows that the microbial communities we carry in and on our bodies, the human microbiome, contain the potential to uniquely identify individuals, much like fingerprints. Researchers and demonstrated that personal microbiomes contain enough distinguishing features to identify an individual over time from among a research study population of hundreds of people. The study, the first to rigorously show that identifying people from microbiome data is feasible, suggests that we have surprisingly unique microbial inhabitants, but could raise potential privacy concerns for subjects enrolled in human microbiome research projects. read more