In studies of the microbiome, variability can arise from numerous steps in the microbial profiling process, including DNA extraction, PCR amplification, and bioinformatics approaches for taxonomic assignment. This variability may contribute to issues with reproducibility in clinical and epidemiologic studies. Others have described the contribution of different steps in the microbial profiling process to measurement variability in samples comprised of bacteria from the human gut. We conducted a comparative study across four laboratories to better understand sources of variation in describing the human vaginal microbiota. In this session, we will share highlights from the pre-conference symposium that presented lessons learned from this comparative project and discuss implications for future vaginal microbiota research.

Disclosure No significant relationships.