A refined microbiome 'fingerprint' method tracks sub-strain variants of a single gut microbe strain

A previously developed a microbiome 'fingerprint' method that identifies single strains of particular gut bacteria through analysis of metagenomics data from fecal samples, has been refined to include looking for single-nucleotide variants in the KEGG metabolic pathways of a particular strain. This magnified analysis shows a short-term difference in sub-strain dynamics of two Bacteroides species between healthy individuals and hospitalized COVID-19 patients.