Detailed Bacterial Composition

This analysis breaks down the "Bacteria Kingdom", which constitutes the vast majority of your total microbial biomass. We accurately identify with DNA what families, genera, and species inhabit your gut, revealing the balance between major functional groups (Phyla) and detecting specific species that define your unique metabolic profile.

Intestinal bacteria are not mere guests; they constitute a dynamic ecosystem that functions as an additional metabolic organ. Each bacterial group has coevolved with humans to perform specific functions that our own cells cannot carry out, such as the digestion of complex fibers or the synthesis of essential vitamins.

This analysis classifies your microbiota into the major biological phyla that determine your "metabolic footprint":

• Firmicutes: Generally associated with efficient energy extraction from food. An excess may be related to increased caloric absorption.
• Bacteroidetes: Specialists in degrading large carbohydrate molecules and regulating the immune response to prevent inflammation.
• Actinobacteria: A crucial group that includes Bifidobacteria, fundamental for maintaining the intestinal barrier and protecting against pathogens.
• Proteobacteria: A phylum containing organisms with high inflammatory potential (E. coli, Salmonella). Their elevated presence is usually a clinical indicator of dysbiosis or intestinal stress.

Understanding the proportion of these groups allows us to assess whether your ecosystem is configured for metabolic health or if it presents risk patterns.

Bacterial composition is the fingerprint of your gut health.

Balanced Dominance: A healthy balance between Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes is associated with stable body weight and good insulin response.

High Species Diversity: The more different species you have, the greater your "biological insurance." If one species fails or is eliminated by antibiotics, others can take its place (functional redundancy), protecting you from disease.

Presence of Pathobionts: Detecting "opportunistic" bacteria at low levels is normal, but if they dominate, they can cause chronic inflammation, gas, and nutrient malabsorption.

Taxonomic characterization is carried out through high-depth Shotgun metagenomic sequencing, coupled with bioinformatic analysis based on the detection of clade-specific marker genes. Unlike conventional amplification techniques, which are often limited to higher taxonomic resolutions, this methodology allows for precise dissection of the microbial community, reaching species-level resolution and even distinguishing specific strains within the same genus. This is fundamental for differentiating beneficial commensal organisms from variants with pathogenic potential that share superficial genetic similarities.

The analytical process includes rigorous quantification of the relative abundance of each taxon, calculated from the coverage of aligned reads against curated reference databases that integrate hundreds of thousands of microbial genomes. Additionally, the system has the capability to identify and classify organisms that have not yet been successfully cultured in the laboratory. This allows for a much more comprehensive and realistic assessment of the total biodiversity of the ecosystem, capturing the biological complexity that escapes traditional cultivation methods.