Join the open source uBiome GitHub repository for microbiome data and tools

ubiomeblog.com

23 points·accarmichael··7 comments

Been watching this story rise since the beginning. No comments left, nobody pays attention, even the title is out of place (what is joinong a repo anyway??). I think there's some magic behind the points this is getting on HN. :-)

Has anyone here derived actionable insight from their microbiome data? I sampled my gut and sure I can see its pretty far off from the average (e.g 51% Bacteroidetes compared to 22.5% average) but err so what? Google brought up a few studies related to microbiomes but there doesn't seem to be any real answer on what a "good" microbiome is, or how deviations from normal are linked to other diseases, how much is dependent on diet (a lot i would think).

To begin with, the reproducibility of your sample is in question - https://mrheisenbug.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/dear-american-g...

The resolution from uBiome data is also 16s, and (likely) too low to yield good information.

There is no definition of a good microbiome. The research is still in its infancy. Attempting to 'improve' your microbiome would likely be a mistake. The upside is that you may have contributed by paying uBiome.

I don't think github (or even git) is ideal for raw data storage.

https://help.github.com/articles/conditions-for-large-files/

Actually, the repo isn't intended to store data whatsoever. It's for publishing tools (scripts mostly) anybody can use to peek into their own data (provided by uBiome).

I really don't see the relevance of this blog post. What's so important about this story to be shared here?

if they wanted to make microbiome data available they could just share some

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