Targeted metagenomic (16S amplicons) of the fecal microbial communities from young healthy lean students from Munich Germany. The Munich Students Cohort fecal microbiome

The study of microbial communities through 16SrRNA amplicon profiles is offering a powerful and inexpensive way to elucidate the role of microbes in multiple conditions of the human body and suggest interventions for prevention or cure. Especially the gut microbiome has been and will continue to be the target of choice of multiple studies as the prominent site of host microbe interactions with systemic implications. The accumulated knowledge has shown that gut microbial profiles show high interindividual variability of the abundances of different microbial taxa leading to the requirement of large numbers of samples to extract safe results. In addition, even in the presence of thousands of gut microbiome studies there are no reference studies that can be used for comparisons and contextualization of individual studies. Here we present the Munich Students Cohort fecal microbiome dataset, a 16S amplicon based microbial profiling of more than two hundred young (avg 23 years), healthy (no chronic disease), lean (<30 BMI), undisturbed (no antibiotics or medication) students. This curated dataset could be utilized as a reference in other studies, offering a common point in assessing the observed profiles of samples from various conditions.