19 Aug 2019 --- In a meta-analysis of the mouth and gut microbiome, Harvard University researchers found over 45 million different sets of genes, in which over half of these were unique to the individual. With this unique insight into our genetic makeup, they seek to build a resource that quantifies the human microbiome, its role in disease and the scale of its genetic diversity. The vast heterogeneity they found has important implications, particularly in the potential of using the microbiome to prevent or detect disease.