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Several disease-associated species have large normal intra-individual variation
Composition and Functional Potential of Gut microbiota Vary Extensively within Individuals
Once early microbiota development is complete in infancy, the Gut microbiota composition in healthy individuals (alfa-diversity) remains relatively stable over time.
Alfa Diversity Was not Significantly Affected by Storage Conditions
The Shannon index measures how evenly the microbes are distributed within a sample. Generally, high variability of alfa biodiversity of colonic microbiota is associated with a healthy status; whereas, low alfa-diversity is commonly associated with pathological states, such as atopy , inflammatory bowel disease (IBD ), autoimmunity , metabolic disease (e.g., type 2 diabetes mellitus), depression and colon-rectum carcinoma
Alfa-diversity (within-sample) is defined as the number of different species (richness) and their distribution (evenness) in a particular specimen (e.g., in one individuum)
The Diversity within an Individual’s Microbiota is called Alfa-diversity
Pathological changes in microbial composition are often associated with reduced diversity
Standard indices to describe alfa-diversity are the Shannon index, Simpson index, and the Chao 1 index