How do you think ubiome.com compares with these efforts? I did an analysis with them and feel like I got some insights, but I also felt that the way the data Is currently presented could lead to a lot of false conclusions, especially for people without a microbiology or statistical background.
I'm also curious about your statement about how many strains are unsewurnced and unstudied. I've read this elsewhere, and it makes me wonder if the species % data presented by ubiome is presented with false precision.
µBiome is vapid consumerism in my opinion. They don't contribute data to the research community (as far as I know).
The vast, vast majority of all bacteria are not culturable in a lab. That being said, we use rRNA/rDNA sequencing[1] to build phylogenies based off of BLAST E-values[2], or how likely it is two sequences evolved separately from each other. We have cultured and sequenced enough of the big three (and many of the top 100 gut microbes) that we can be statistically sure that they're related. We can't say for sure two different but closely related sequences are two different, closely related species but we can say they're related OTUs[3]
I quite liked that it was possible to download my raw data file from ubiome. I got my first results back a couple months ago. Then I got sick and in a while I'll know precisely how a course of antibiotics devastated my microbiome (but killed what it needed to, so I'll probably live.)
I'm also curious about your statement about how many strains are unsewurnced and unstudied. I've read this elsewhere, and it makes me wonder if the species % data presented by ubiome is presented with false precision.