Research over the last decade attracted many scientists, industries and national authorities to invest in national and international projects on human microbiome research and India is not far behind. India is steadily moving from genomics to multiomics research and Human Microbiome Initiative is one such project with a target of sampling more than 3400 individuals across the country from 10 endogamous and 7 tribal communities. Comprehensive data on diet, demography, host genotype, Ayurvedic Prakriti phenotypesand correlation with bacterial, fungal, archaeal and micro eukaryotic diversity have helped to identify community-specific microbial signatures. To date, microbiome profiling for all 3400 individuals has been completed. Additionally, 657 whole metagenomes with >10 Gb data per sample have been sequenced.
Tribal communities untouched by modern lifestyle and westernization harbour the higher microbial diversity which was found to confer health benefits. Hence biobanking this diversity is imperative to understand modern lifestyle-associated diseases. Microbes preserved from tribal communities may hold the key to the development of indigenous precision probiotics. This is the first reference human microbiome from healthy individuals which will pave the way for future research on different disease models and the development of precision probiotics for Indian populations.