BackgroundMicrobial inhabitants of soils are important to ecosystem and planetary functions, yet there are large gaps in our knowledge of their diversity and ecology. The ‘Biomes of Australian Soil Environments’ (BASE) project has generated a database of microbial diversity with associated metadata across extensive environmental gradients at continental scale. As the characterisation of microbes rapidly expands, the BASE database provides an evolving platform for interrogating and integrating microbial diversity and function.FindingsBASE currently provides amplicon sequences and associated contextual data for over 900 sites encompassing all Australian states and territories, a wide variety of bioregions, vegetation and land-use types. Amplicons target bacteria, archaea and general and fungal-specific eukaryotes. The growing database will soon include metagenomics data. Data are provided in both raw sequence (FASTQ) and analysed OTU table formats and are accessed via the project’s data portal, which provides a user-friendly search tool to quickly identify samples of interest. Processed data can be visually interrogated and intersected with other Australian diversity and environmental data using tools developed by the ‘Atlas of Living Australia’.ConclusionsDeveloped within an open data framework, the BASE project is the first Australian soil microbial diversity database. The database will grow and link to other global efforts to explore microbial, plant, animal, and marine biodiversity. Its design and open access nature ensures that BASE will evolve as a valuable tool for documenting an often overlooked component of biodiversity and the many microbe-driven processes that are essential to sustain soil function and ecosystem services.

Anal HPV infection was nearly universal in this community-based sample of homosexual men. A wide variety of HPV genotypes were detected, and co-infection with multiple genotypes was common. Anal HPV infection is more prevalent and more diverse in HIV-positive than HIV-negative homosexual men.

Persistent infection with high-risk (HR) human papillomaviruses (HPV) has been demonstrated as the necessary causal factor for developing high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and potential progression to carcinoma of the cervix (1, 2, 21, 33, 47). There are more than 100 recognized HPV genotypes, of which approximately 40 have tropism specifically for the anogenital mucosa. Based on their epidemiological association with high-grade CIN and cervical cancer, anogenital HPV genotypes are divided into HR and low-risk (LR) types (11,22). Nearly all cases of cervical cancer have been shown to contain HR-HPV genotypes, with declining proportions found among high-grade and low-grade CIN lesions, respectively (1, 7, 22, 47). Most HPV infections, regardless of risk association, are transient and asymptomatic and cleared by host immunity without leading to obvious cellular abnormalities. However, persistent infection with the same HR-type substantially increases the risk for developing highgrade dysplasia (ՆCIN2), and ultimately cervical cancer (14,16,30,48).Considering the substantial association between HR-HPV infection and cervical cancer, it has been proposed that incorporation of highly sensitive HPV detection methods, such as HPV DNA testing, into current screening programs may improve the identification of cervical abnormalities in women. Several studies have shown that HR-HPV testing, either as an independent screening tool or as an adjunct to current Pap smear cytology, could improve the efficacy of population-based screening programs in detecting underlying lesions or their subsequent development, for triage of women with equivocal or minor cytological lesions and, as a follow-up test for women treated for high-grade lesions to predict treatment success or failure (4,9,19,42,49).There are a myriad of molecular tests for detecting HPV infection, of which the Hybrid Capture 2 assay (HC2; Digene Corp., Gaithersburg, MD) is the only commercial HPV DNA test currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (5,8,27,46). In addition, there are numerous PCR amplification methods in widespread use, although most largely constitute nonstandardized in-house assays. PCR-based systems frequently used for HPV detection include the primer sets GP5ϩ/GP6ϩ (10, 15) and MY09/11 and their subsequently modified and improved derivatives PGMY09/11 (12, 13) and the SPF10 system (18,24,25), which have been coupled with reverse line-dot blot systems for additional HPV

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