This overall composition of phyla is comparable to prior 16S rDNA sequencing studies of the human urogenital tract (vaginal microbiota [79] and male urogenital tract [27, 28, 85]). However, we also found sequences from Fedratinib Fibrobacteres, a phylum not previously associated with human microbiota as described by the Human Microbiome Project catalog (HMP) [69, 86], the Human

Oral Microbiome Database (HOMD) [70, 87] and in studies on the gastrointestinal tract, vaginal and male urine bacterial flora [27, 28, 79, 88, 89]. Our analysis revealed that the bacterial composition in human female urine specimens is polymicrobial and that there is considerable variation between urine samples

(Figure 2B). Lactobacillus, Prevotella and Gardnerella were the dominant genera (Figure 2A), however, not every urine sample this website exhibited 16S rDNA from these genera (Figure 2B), indicating that a single characteristic microbial community for female urine cannot be established. Similar results were also seen in Nelson et al. (2010) [27] and Dong et al. (2011) [28] in their studies on male urine composition. While Lactobacillus and Prevotella were not among the dominant genera in the first study [27], rDNA sequences belonging to these genera FK506 order were dominant in the latter study [28], as it is in our data. Lactobacillus was, however, considerably more abundant in female than in male urine. The two studies on male urine did not display the genus Gardnerella (typically associated with the female vagina), as a major bacterium, while this genus is one of three dominating genera in our study. In contrast, Sneathia, another vaginal bacterium

– only present at low abundance in female urine, was reported as a dominant genus in male urine. Comparison of V1V2 and V6 primer sets Two different primer sets previously used for investigating human microbial communities [32, 33] covering different parts of the hypervariable regions were used in this study. The V1V2 region is noted for its robustness for taxonomic classification, Clomifene while the V6 region is more appropriate for measuring microbial diversity due to high variability [32, 90, 91]. These differences were also reflected in our study where V1V2 uncovered a wider taxonomical range (Figure 2 and Table 2). Both rDNA regions detected approximately the same groups at phylum and order level, however, a larger difference was evident at the genus level. The V1V2 method detected 35 different genera in total, 16 of which were not found in the V6 dataset. The V6 method detected 28 genera in total, where 10 genera were unique to this dataset. Thus, using a combination of these two primer sets clearly maximized the bacterial diversity that could be detected.