About our tests

What our microbiome tests detect

A searchable list of over 4,000 bacteria and fungi (yeasts) that the Tota test can identify in a vaginal or urine sample using DNA sequencing technology.

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Reviewed by Dr Nick Parkinson, PhD, Chief Scientist and Co-founder of Tota
Last reviewed September 2026

Our tests don’t work from a list of organisms we’ve decided to look for in advance. Third-generation metagenomic sequencing reads the genetic material (DNA) in your sample and works out which organisms it came from.

DNA doesn’t arrive with a name attached. To turn it into something you read in your Tota report, we compare it against a database of organisms that scientists have already sequenced and named. Every stretch of DNA we read gets matched to the closest organism in the database.

Tota’s database holds over 4,000 bacteria and fungi, named to species level. That’s what’s on this page.

The same database sits behind both our vaginal and urine tests. What changes between them is the sample, not the range of what we can find.

Search it below or read on for the organisms we get asked about most.

How Tota’s microbiome test differs from other tests

Almost every microbiome test on the market is what’s known as a panel test. A panel test uses PCR to look for a small number of named organisms, usually somewhere between five and thirty. It asks a fixed set of questions and returns a fixed set of answers.

Anything outside the panel is invisible to it. Not absent. Invisible, because nothing in the test was built to see it.

Metagenomic sequencing works the other way round. It reads first and identifies afterwards. So what we can find isn’t fixed when the test is built. It depends on what’s in the database.

Reading the sample first is also what makes species-level detail possible. Sequencing reads the DNA in chunks, and the longer the chunk, the more detail it carries. Longer chunks let us name the exact species rather than only the group it belongs to. That matters more than it sounds. For example, Lactobacillus crispatus and Lactobacillus iners behave quite differently in the research, and there are six named Gardnerella species where there was once thought to be one.

For a side-by-side look at the methods themselves, see our comparison of microbiome testing methods.

Vaginal test

Organisms commonly found in vaginal samples

These are the organisms that come up most often in vaginal microbiome results. If you’re here for the urine test, the sections further down will be more useful to you, though there is plenty of overlap between the two.

Lactobacillus species make up the majority of bacteria in many vaginal microbiomes and we name them individually rather than reporting “Lactobacillus” as a single line.

Lactobacillus crispatus and Lactobacillus iners are the two most discussed in the research and they’re often described as different community state types. Your community state type describes the overall pattern of your vaginal microbiome, based on which bacteria are most dominant. So a result that separates them tells you more than one that doesn’t. Lactobacillus gasseri and Lactobacillus jensenii are also commonly reported in vaginal samples.

Some of these names have changed. In 2020 scientists compared the full genetic code of every Lactobacillus and found it wasn’t one group but more than twenty. Most kept the Lactobacillus name. Three in this section didn’t: Lactobacillus reuteri is now Limosilactobacillus reuteri, Lactobacillus rhamnosus is now Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus and Lactobacillus fermentum is now Limosilactobacillus fermentum. Same organisms, new labels. Both the old and new names are searchable above.

One you might recognise from probiotic labels: Lactobacillus acidophilus. It’s in the database and it’s far more commonly reported in gut samples than vaginal ones.

When the balance shifts away from Lactobacillus, Gardnerella is often the group of organisms named in its place.

For decades it was reported as one organism, Gardnerella vaginalis, which is the name most people know. Genomic work has since separated it into several species. We hold six: G. vaginalis, G. piotii, G. leopoldii, G. swidsinskii, G. pickettii and G. greenwoodii. They’re almost impossible to tell apart by anything other than their genetic sequence, which is why we use third-generation metagenomic sequencing.

Three other organisms often appear in the same research. Fannyhessea vaginae is far better known by its former name, Atopobium vaginae, which it carried until 2021. Mobiluncus curtisii was described long before sequencing existed but is rarely reported by routine methods, because it grows slowly. Sneathia vaginalis also appears in the literature as Sneathia amnii.

These organisms are studied in relation to bacterial vaginosis and to shifts in vaginal balance, and that research is active rather than settled. Your report tells you which of them were found and in what proportion. It’s yours to take to your GP, so you go into the conversation informed.

Tota’s microbiome tests identify both bacteria and fungi and report them at species level.

If you’ve looked into thrush or yeast infections, the organism you’ll have come across is Candida albicans. It’s by a wide margin the most commonly reported yeast in vaginal samples.

Several have been reclassified and renamed and the old names are still the ones you’ll recognise. Nakaseomyces glabratus is the organism nearly everyone still calls Candida glabrata. Pichia kudriavzevii was Candida krusei. Clavispora lusitaniae was Candida lusitaniae. For all three, both the old and new names are searchable above. Candida parapsilosis, C. tropicalis, C. dubliniensis and C. orthopsilosis keep their familiar names.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is on the list as well, which surprises people. It’s brewer’s and baker’s yeast: it turns up in some foods and probiotics and it’s occasionally reported in vaginal samples.

You can’t reliably tell these yeasts apart by looking at them, which is why species-level detail matters here. If you’ve got symptoms, your GP or pharmacist is the right person to talk to and your report is something you can take with you.

Urine test

Organisms commonly found in urine samples

Your urinary tract is not sterile. That was the working assumption for most of the twentieth century and sequencing has shown otherwise. Healthy urine carries a microbial community of its own.

E. coli is the name most people recognise here, short for Escherichia coli, and it’s the organism most frequently reported in urinary microbiome research. It’s a Gram-negative bacterium, as are Klebsiella pneumoniae, Klebsiella oxytoca, Proteus mirabilis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Gram-negative and Gram-positive are two groups, sorted by what the outside of the bacterium is made of. A dye test from the 1880s tells them apart and labs still use it because that outer layer changes how an organism behaves, including which antibiotics can get through it.

Proteus mirabilis is worth a line of its own. It produces urease, an enzyme that breaks down urea and raises the pH of urine, which is why it comes up so often in research on urinary chemistry. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is worth mentioning too because it’s found in soil and water as well as in human samples.

The Gram-positive names here are Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium, both are more familiar from gut research, along with Staphylococcus saprophyticus and Staphylococcus aureus.

Plenty of these are reported in people with no urinary symptoms at all, so finding one isn’t the same as finding a problem. That’s why your report gives you proportions rather than a verdict, and why reading them alongside your symptoms and history is where your healthcare professional comes in.

Slow-growing organisms may be under-represented in research which is based on methods requiring bacteria to be grown in a laboratory. The reason is technical rather than biological: they grow slowly or they need particular gases, media or incubation times.

Metagenomic sequencing reads DNA directly and does not require an organism to be grown in a laboratory before it can be identified. It reads the DNA directly, so an organism that’s awkward to grow is no harder to name than one that grows easily.

We hold three Aerococcus species: A. urinae, A. sanguinicola and A. christensenii. We also hold Actinotignum schaalii, which some people will know as Actinobaculum schaalii, the name it had until 2015. Alloscardovia omnicolens was only described in 2007. Corynebacterium urealyticum, like Proteus mirabilis, produces urease.

Researchers only started paying close attention to these once sequencing made them easier to see. The research is recent and what they mean is still being worked out.

Both tests

Organisms found in both

The vagina and the urinary tract sit close together, so plenty of organisms turn up in both. Whichever test you take, the two sections below are relevant to you.

Ureaplasma and Mycoplasma differ from many other bacteria because they do not have a cell wall and they’re among the smallest free-living organisms known. That makes them difficult for methods built around growing bacteria and it’s part of why they’re under-reported compared with how often sequencing finds them.

We hold Ureaplasma urealyticum and Ureaplasma parvum. The two were treated as one species until 2002, so older research and older results may use U. urealyticum to refer to either. Mycoplasma hominis is in the database too. It’s been reclassified as Metamycoplasma hominis, though almost nobody uses that yet.

All three are commonly reported in both sample types, including in people with no symptoms. The research on what their presence means is mixed. Your report tells you what organisms were found and in what proportion, and your healthcare professional can put it in context.

These are the names that turn up across both tests, usually at low levels and usually in people who feel completely well. And they don’t all turn up for the same reason.

Streptococcus agalactiae, widely known as group B Strep, is commonly carried without any symptoms at all, but can cause problems at high levels. It can come up in discussions about pregnancy care, which is a conversation for your midwife or GP rather than something a microbiome report can answer.

You might know Bifidobacterium longum and B. breve from probiotic labels. Finegoldia magna was once classified as Peptostreptococcus magnus, and Anaerococcus vaginalis came from the same group when it was split up. Atopobium parvulum is now Lancefieldella parvula, though the older name is still the common one.

A few of these don’t live in the vagina or urinary tract at all. They can occasionally reach a sample through ordinary contact during collection. Cutibacterium acnes, renamed from Propionibacterium acnes in 2016, lives on almost everyone’s skin. Staphylococcus hominis and Corynebacterium amycolatum also live on the skin. And Streptococcus mitis is a normal resident of the mouth.

We could filter these out. We don’t, because that would mean deciding for you what’s worth seeing and what’s not. Our scientists look at whether a low reading makes sense for that sample and publish your results accordingly.

Why unusual organisms are in the list

Search the database and you’ll find organisms associated with soil, freshwater, plant roots and even the deep ocean. That doesn’t mean we expect to find them in vaginal or urine samples.

A reference database brings together published genetic information from organisms scientists have studied across many different environments. This includes organisms commonly found in the human microbiome alongside others that are unlikely to appear in vaginal or urine samples.

This gives unexpected sequencing data something to be compared against and potentially identified. Most soil and marine organisms will never appear in a human sample and being in the database isn’t a prediction that they’ll appear in yours.

Questions

You can search for it above. It matches current and former names, so Candida glabrata finds Nakaseomyces glabratus.

Yes. Tota’s vaginal and urine microbiome tests use the same reference database of over 4,000 bacteria and fungi. What differs is the sample and therefore which organisms are present in your results.

Your results will not include every organism in Tota’s database. The database represents the range of organisms that can be identified, while a typical sample contains far fewer. Whether an organism appears depends on whether its DNA is present in your sample.

If an organism was not detected, its DNA was not found above Tota’s reporting threshold in that particular sample. It’s a statement about the sample, not about you. If you have symptoms or a specific worry, a GP or healthcare professional is the right person to talk to.

The percentage is that organism’s share of the total microbial DNA in your sample. Your report also gives you the amount present, so you can see both. There’s no pass or fail and no level at which the report starts telling you something is wrong.

A panel is designed around a small number of named targets and can only report on those. Sequencing reads the genetic material present and identifies it afterwards, against the database on this page.

Classification changes as the genetic data improves and several organisms here were renamed in the last decade. The organism hasn’t changed, only its label. We list both so the page works whichever name you search.

Not on our own, no. Two scientists review every report before publication and the report explains what each organism is and how it’s discussed in the research. It doesn’t interpret your results or draw conclusions about your health.

No. Our sequencing reads bacteria and fungi. Viruses aren’t in the reference database and aren’t reported.

The database above was published in September 2026. We will update this page when the database changes.

Reading your own microbiome

A database is a list of what is possible. Your Tota report is a measurement of what is actually there, named to a species level, with the amount of each organism we detected and its share of the total. You can see an example of a Tota report before you order.

Choose the vaginal microbiome test, the urine microbiome test or both together. You collect the sample at home and return it to our lab in Oxfordshire, results in 2 to 5 days and two scientists review your results before they reach you.

tota recommended

Vaginal and Urine Microbiome Test

£449.00

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Urine Microbiome Test

£299.00

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Vaginal Microbiome Test

£299.00

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Tota is a wellness test that gives insights into your microbiome. It is not a diagnostic test. If you have symptoms or health concerns, please speak to a healthcare professional.