Fig. 1

Cluster analysis of next generation sequencing data of women without and with various extents of BV. At the top the first color bar from the left shows the numbering and color-coding of the grouping that the clustering of the women (the dimension of the abscissa) suggests. The second color bar refers to the low (blue) to high (red) Nugent score of the women. On the abscissa the family, genus, species identities are shown clustered on the basis of this next generation sequencing data set. An asterisk indicates the species that are considered to be a result of isolation of background DNA from bacterial species of a non-vaginal origin, as based on systematic comparisons with previously reported compositions of the vaginal microbiome [22, 30]. Two asterisks indicate multiple hits with identical similarity in RDP database: the species Streptococcus salivarius, which cannot be discriminated from Enterococcus faecium and Sneathia sanguinegens, which cannot be discriminated from Leptotrichia amnionii