The overall mission of the HMP is to generate resources to facilitate characterization of the human microbiota to further our understanding of how the microbiome impacts human health and disease. The initial phase of the project, HMP1, established in 2008, characterized the microbial communities from 300 healthy individuals, across several different sites on the human body: nasal passages, oral cavity, skin, gastrointestinal tract, and urogenital tract. 16S rRNA sequencing was performed to characterize the complexity of microbial communities at each body sites, and to begin to ask investigate whether there is a core healthy microbiome. Metagenomic whole genome shotgun (wgs) sequencing provided insights into the functions and pathways present in the human microbiome.

Classification: microbe

Data type: genome sequencing