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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Feb 26.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Med. 2018 Apr 10;24(4):392–400. doi: 10.1038/nm.4517

Figure 2:

Figure 2:

The dynamics of the human microbiome. The human microbiome has been shown to be highly dynamic. A) Taking a “representative” sample of a human microbiome at any given site is challenging because while the microbiome is known to settle after birth (green line), the composition can vary both over short term and long term timescales (orange line and blue line respectively). B) The effect of the rate of change of the varying species on the ability to take a representative sample as indicated by the black line is shown.