The healthy lung was long thought of as sterile, but recent advances using molecular
sequencing approaches have detected bacteria at low levels. Healthy lung bacteria largely …

The human body is colonized by a diverse community of microorganisms collectively
referred to as the microbiota. Here, we describe how the human microbiota influences …

The lungs were long thought to be sterile until technical advances uncovered the presence
of the lung microbial community. The microbiome of healthy lungs is mainly derived from the …

Studies of the human microbiome share both technical and conceptual similarities with
genome-wide association studies and genetic epidemiology. However, the microbiome has …

Background Recent studies have suggested that bacteria associated with the placenta—a
“placental microbiome”—may be important in reproductive health and disease. However, a …

Although culture-independent techniques have refuted lung sterility in health, controversy
about contamination during bronchoscope passage through the upper respiratory tract …

Background Historically, the human womb has been thought to be sterile in healthy
pregnancies, but this idea has been challenged by recent studies using DNA sequence …

Rationale: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive lung disease of unknown
cause that leads to respiratory failure and death within 5 years of diagnosis. Overt …

Rationale: Results from 16S rDNA-encoding gene sequence–based, culture-independent
techniques have led to conflicting conclusions about the composition of the lower respiratory …

ABSTRACT DNA from phylogenetically diverse microbes is routinely recovered from healthy
human lungs and used to define the lung microbiome. The proportion of this DNA originating …