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Researchers have been able to reconstruct the genome sequence of a bacterial strain which bypasses the need for growing bacteria in the lab. This could stop an outbreak in its tracks due to the increased speed of identifying the bacteria.

A variety of microbial communities and their genes (the microbiome) exist throughout the human body, with fundamental roles in human health and disease. The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Human Microbiome Project Consortium has established a population-scale framework to develop metagenomic protocols, resulting in a broad range of quality-controlled resources and data including standardized methods for creating, processing and interpreting distinct types of high-throughput metagenomic data available to the scientific community. An ambitious article found in another article I enjoyed reading. Was incredibly interested to find out that the vaginal microbiota of pregnant women was significantly different from non-pregnant and to find that these microbiota are preparing the soon to be born baby with it's own microbiota!! (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/science/studies-of-human-microbiome-yield-new-insights.html?ref=microbiology)