Figure 1.

Primary possibilities for microbiota research. To understand the roles and interactions of the microbiota, we can start from the animal sources for (a) the development of an in vivo model and to obtain samples such as feces or microbiota from the gut, and (b) to obtain gut regions and to develop in vitro continuous organ cultures that mimic the biological environment. Likewise, once the samples from the animal models are obtained, (c) culturomics can be used as a powerful approach to identify the uncultured members of the gut, search for differences between species at more than the phylum level, and generate results more quickly by coupling tools such as (d) matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization–time of flight (MALDI–TOF) to generate valid and reproducible results. On the other hand, for both the culture and samples, the researcher can use (e) the metagenomics approach, which can be divided into two main techniques: (f) The 16S ribosomal sequence amplification, which provides information related to phyla and the abundance in the sample, or (g) whole microbial DNA sequencing, which provides more information than simply the phylum or abundance, showing the relationship between microbial enzymes, metabolic pathways, or genetic expression, and diseases such as obesity and others. This figure was made using Creative Commons resources and cannot be copyrighted by others.