Source: phys.org Author: staff, Drexel University In the last decade, scientists have made tremendous progress in understanding that groups of bacteria and viruses that naturally coexist throughout the human body play an important role in some vital functions like digestion, metabolism and even fighting off diseases. But understanding just how they do it remains a question. Researchers from Drexel University are hoping to help answer that question through a clever combination of high-throughput genetic sequencing and natural language processing computer algorithms. Their research, which was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, reports a new method of analyzing the codes found in RNA that can delineate human microbial communities and reveal how they operate. Much of the research on the human microbial environment—or microbiome—has focused on identifying all of the different microbe species. And the nascent development of treatments for microbiota-linked maladies operates under the idea that imbalances or deviations in the microbiome are the source of health problems, such as indigestion or Crohn's disease. But to properly correct these imbalances it's important for scientists to have a broader understanding of microbial communities as they exist—both in the afflicted areas and throughout the entire body. "We are really just beginning to scrape the surface of understanding the health effects of microbiota," said Gail Rosen, Ph.D., an associate professor in Drexel's College of Engineering, who was an author of the paper. "In many ways scientists have jumped into this work without having a full picture of what these microbial communities look [...]