The National Centre for Microbial Resource (NVMR)-National Centre for or Cell Science will soon undertake the Indian Human Microbioma initiative, a first-of-its-kind project on microbiome.

The initiative will help understand how people respond differently to the same medicine.

This project aims to study various microbiomes present in the human body. About 90 endogenous groups will be studied along with 13 ethnic tribes chosen for their specific features, said NCMR microbiologist and project head Yogesh Shouche during the conference on Microbiome Research.

We will take oral, skin and gut microbiome from individuals. We will also take six blood parameters from people.

This will be correlated with the microbiomes to understand their inter-relation. Since we are taking population across the country, we will get data on about 20,000 people.

This will probably be the largest such study ever undertaken on such a diverse group of people,” shared Shouche.