Culturomics: a new approach to study the human microbiome

Humans are heavily colonized by about 100 000 billions of bacteria (1014) and the composition of our microbiota has been shown to be associated with various diseases such as obesity, diabetes, atopic dermatitis, and bacterial vaginosis [1]. The medical importance of our microbiota, which has even been considered as a “human organ”[2], has thus led to a growing number of descriptive studies, mainly comparing the microbiome of healthy and ill individuals. Since the large majority of microbial communities are located in the gut, an especially high number of work tried to define the composition of its core microbiota, as well as to identify specific alterations that might be associated to various pathology such as ulcerative colitis, colorectal cancer, or necrotizing enterocolitis [3-5]. © 2012 The Authors Clinical Microbiology and Infection © 2012 European Society ofClinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases