Bladder culture collection reveals interconnected urogenital microbiome

Contrary to medical dogma, even in healthy individuals, urine is not sterile. Indeed, diverse groups of bacteria can be cultured from catheterized urine, demonstrating that a bladder specific microbiota exists3. Although many studies have examined the correlation between bladder microbiome and disease state, this research is hampered by the limited number of isolates cultured and genome-sequenced isolates. This absence also limits comprehensive comparison between the bladder microbiome and other human microbiota communities, since isolates of the same species collected from different sites can have dramatically different phenotypic characteristics. Here, we purified bacterial strains from 76 women to generate a culture collection of 149 genome-sequenced isolates from the bladder.