Low-cost genetic sequencing and high-powered computational methods now allow scientists to amass huge amounts of data on the makeup of individuals’ microbiomes, or the hundreds of species of microorganisms that call our bodies home. The goal is to use that data to learn more about the bacteria and other microbes that ordinarily help keep us healthy, but can lead to serious problems like inflammatory bowel disease when disrupted.
But how do you organize that information to have it make any sense?
Eric Alm and colleagues had the same question. “We wanted to figure out a way to quickly visualize all of that data,” says the associate professor of biological engineering and co-director of the Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics. Alm posed the question to his wife, Katherine Huang, a data-visualization specialist at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and eventually convinced her to write a computer program to do the visualization. “It was my Christmas present,” Alm says.
The program generates a microbiome “tree” for individuals participating in Alm lab research studies. Each tree, like that shown above, captures a variety of information, including the proportions of different microbes in an individual’s gut and how those microbes are related to each other. In the tree above, for example, each dot represents a different species of microbe. The dots’ colors correspond to the nine different phyla, or larger categories, these species fall under.
Read more about the founding of the new Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics in the Spring 2015 issue of Spectrum: “Microbiome Research: A New Frontier in Medicine”