American Gut

What's in your gut?

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Learn which microbes live in your

Gut, Skin & Mouth

The American Gut Project: The world’s largest crowd-sourced, citizen science microbiome research project. When you contribute, you’ll receive a sampling kit. Take and send in a sample, and you’ll receive a report that shows a “snapshot” of the microbes found in your sample, along with comparisons to the rest of the population. In addition, you'll contribute to a dataset that can contribute to scientific research surrounding the gut.

While “gut” may be in the name of the project, sampling can extend as well to the skin and oral sites of the human body, as there are plenty of microbes found in these sites as well.

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What is Citizen Science?

Citizen science projects welcome the participation of anyone in the discovery and sharing of scientific knowledge -- that way, research in a specific scientific field can pull from data that was generated from the general public!

All the data collected by the American Gut Project is de-identified and made public. This way, other researchers around the world can utilize American Gut data to make discoveries of their own by identifying microbiome trends and answering intriguing questions about the connection between our microbes and our health.

Here’s to the power of citizen science!

Why The Gut?

We want to understand the gut: How different lifestyles affect its composition, establish an understanding of what a "normal" gut might be, and how to link it to clinical applications!

All of our microbiomes vary from one another, with a specific subset of species of microbes that are influenced by how we live our lives and in turn, influence our health. By gathering as much data as possible on people's guts, we can provide the means to investigate associations between the gut and factors like diet, sleep patterns, disorders, to make potential connections. Microbiome research then can hopefully make its way into a clinical setting, which will allow for the prospect of innovative therapies, diagnostics, or informed advice for our health.

How To Join

    The process is simple.
  1. Make a monetary contribution via our Fundrazr page and claim a kit.
  2. We will send you a sample collection kit in the mail within 2 weeks.
  3. Register your sample via our participant website, answer some dietary and lifestyle questions, take a sample, and mail the sample back to us.
  4. We’ll analyze your sample and upload results* to your own participant web portal approximately 3 months later from when we receive your sample. (see more about this on our 101 page).
*Please note that results are not actionable. We do not provide any type of medical or clinical service, including diagnoses or recommendations
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The American Gut is one of the largest crowd sourced, citizen science projects in the country. We discover new information daily to shed light on the the connections between the human microbiome and health.