The Gut Microbiome Tree of Life project is a Northwestern University and UC San Diego led research project.  See our People tab to see project contributors.

The advent of high-throughput sequencing has allowed researchers to characterize microbial communities at an unprecedented scale with trillions of novel sequences being generated every year. While this has led to the characterization of many gut microbiomes across the animal kingdom, few efforts have undergone to compile all the data into one dataset for scientists to analyze. This is where the Gut Microbiome Tree of Life Project comes in. To date we have compiled 17,000 gut microbiomes samples from a broad range of hosts spanning chordates to anthropods, and even annelids. Our goal is to curate a strategically designed dataset that includes an equal representation of of all animal phylogenies, diets, ecologies, and geographies, including those of human populations around the globe. See below to visualize our progress so far. 

Here are some plots showing the diversity of what we've collected so far. See our Research tab for additional information.

And here's an interactive graph showing what are sample distribution is like across host phyla and classes