NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Exposure to xenobiotics affects the makeup of the human gut microbiome and what genes it expresses, researchers from Harvard University reported in Cell today.

By combining a number of techniques, including flow cytometry and 16S rRNA sequencing, Harvard's Peter Turnbaugh and his colleagues characterized the active portion of the human gut microbiome and studied how it reacted to perturbations from antibiotics and other drugs targeted to the human host.