First world problems

As the microbiome sheds its status as fringe science and moves to the mainstream, leading researchers are grappling with how to solve problems and create common standards that will set the field on the right track before years of effort and money are squandered on generating unactionable data. In a pair of commentaries published in Science and Nature, respectively, over 50 scientists have called for unified initiatives to coordinate and fund research and applications of microbiomes in the human body and biosphere.

The idea is to draw on the expertise from multiple fields which are separately accumulating data and developing methods, but are currently mired in what the Nature commentary termed "disciplinary silos." Beyond biology, where the microbiome holds potential for drug development and precision medicine, those fields include chemistry, physics, engineering, and ecology, in which microbiome research is finding applications in areas as diverse as climate change, agriculture and biofuels...