TY - JOUR AU - Lau, Jennifer T. AU - Whelan, Fiona J. AU - Herath, Isiri AU - Lee, Christine H. AU - Collins, Stephen M. AU - Bercik, Premysl AU - Surette, Michael G. PY - 2016 DA - 2016/07/01 TI - Capturing the diversity of the human gut microbiota through culture-enriched molecular profiling JO - Genome Medicine SP - 72 VL - 8 IS - 1 AB - The human gut microbiota has been implicated in most aspects of health and disease; however, most of the bacteria in this community are considered unculturable, so studies have relied on molecular-based methods. These methods generally do not permit the isolation of organisms, which is required to fully explore the functional roles of bacteria for definitive association with host phenotypes. Using a combination of culture and 16S rRNA gene sequencing, referred to as culture-enriched molecular profiling, we show that the majority of the bacteria identified by 16S sequencing of the human gut microbiota can be cultured. SN - 1756-994X UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s13073-016-0327-7 DO - 10.1186/s13073-016-0327-7 ID - Lau2016 ER -