Vaginal microbial communities play an important role in women’s heath.  It is now clear that the vaginal microbiome is linked to pregnancy complications such as preterm birth and risk for acquisition of sexually transmitted infections including HIV.  The relative simplicity of the vaginal microbiome also makes it an ideal system for piloting new for multi-omic assays and new integrative analytical methods. Multi-omic approaches include 16S rRNA surveys, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics and metabolomics. New approaches and technologies are rapidly advancing the frontiers of our understanding of host-microbiome interactions. Further efforts to limit sources of bias and increase harmonization across studies are critical for the validation of findings to inform evidence-based medicine.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify commonly used multi-omic approaches.

2: Describe the current challenges and opportunities in multi-omic science.