genius I tell you, genius wrote:
Ok, here's my plan. I know a guy who works for a company that does colon cancer diagnostics where you poop in a bucket and mail it in and they run tests on it.
All I have to do is convince Eliud Kipchoge he has colon cancer, have my friend nab some of the good stuff, and boom. Gut biodiversity baby. Sub 14 here I come.
These colon cancer diagnostics likely don't do 16s rRNA sequencing, which is how you actually figure out which bacteria are present.
The lab I work in does a bit of microbiome work and we had a good discussion about this article and it seems sound though obviously a larger study would be needed to make any real claims. After a certain amount of time the microbiome would likely revert back to it's original state so you would have to get reinoculated if you wanted to stay good or ingest foods/compound that enrich for specific bacteria.
Microbiome sequencing does not cost very much,
I think that it costs about $50 per sample and if you wanted to metagenome sequencing (which is what you really need to reach any real conclusions) it would be at least another $50. So it is quite possible that in the not too distant future companies like 23 and me will be offering this type alongside genome sequencing.