Are we really 'Humans'?

"Human body is composed of ~10 trillion cells, each possessing DNA (~3.2 billion length string of 4 characters) that encodes genetic information. Interestingly, human body hosts ten times more microbial cells! Being our `host’, these microbial ecosystems (our `second genome'), called the `Microbiome', are thus expected to have a huge influence on our well being. In order to understand our second genome, one needs to sequence and analyze the DNA of the entire microbial  community. Specialized algorithms are needed to gain meaningful insights and to decipher how the community function and contribute to human physiology. Major challenges, methodologies to address them and some of the exciting outcomes from analytics in a few selected microbiome studies will be highlighted during my talk. "