The human microbiome is highly personalized, and different people harbor different collections of microbes with varying densities. Understanding the relevance of the different microbiota may be our key to understanding health differences between individuals.
We can find microbiome on the skin, hair, vagina, nostrils, and many other locations, but 95% of our microbiota is located in our GI tract. We have at least 1.3:1 bacteria cells to human cells and 100:1 microbial genes to human genes. We are outnumbered!
We need to identify the organisms that live inside our bodies to use all this data for prediction and diagnosis, but sometimes we don’t have the correct reference genome.
So we need a way to build new genomes!
The solution originated in 1935 when Euler solved the 'Bridges of Königsberg' problem. Nicolaas de Bruijn adapted Euler’s idea and formed the de Bruijn graph. Today de Bruijn graph is used to assemble billions of short sequencing reads into novel genomes.