UNITED STATES

Half a billion dollars are being pledged to study the microbes in crops, soils, oceans—and humans. (The Atlantic)

Take a look at some of these “misunderstood microbes” with our video study guide.

Teachers, scroll down for a quick list of key resources in our Teachers’ Toolkit.

Discussion Ideas

• President Obama recently announced the launch of the $121-million National Microbiome Initiative. What is a microbiome?
  • A microbiome describes an entire ecological community (biome) of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms. A microbiome exists entirely in and on humans, other animals, crops, soils, oceans, and other “macro-biomes.”
    • The human microbiome is a collection of microorganisms that reside on the surface and in deep layers of the skin, mouth, eyes, and gut of living human beings. The human biome includes organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and archaea, but does not include microscopic animals.

• Why are microbiomes important?
  • Microbiology is part of life on Earth, and has a wide impact on processes and phenomena. “Soil microbes affect the viability of our farmlands. Plant microbes affect the yield of our crops. Oceanic microbes affect the circulating of oxygen, carbon, and other nutrients around the entire planet. The microbes of our buildings influence our exposure to disease-causing species. All of these are as important to us as the gut microbes that more directly affect our risk of obesity or inflammatory bowel disease.”

• How do microbiomes help scientists better understand the biomes (macro-biomes) in which we live?
  • There are “important parallels between these communities. A coral reef being overrun by algae is not dissimilar to an inflamed gut, while swallowing antibiotics is a bit like unleashing crude oil upon the Gulf of Mexico.
    • “‘You’re perturbing an ecosystem, seeing a change, and not being able to interpret that change,’ says Jo Handelsman, associate director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. ‘The same questions are being asked about many microbiomes. What’s a healthy one? What’s normal? How do we change them? These are things people think about in oceans, lakes, soil, and people. The principles underlying the answers are probably common.’”

• The Atlantic’s great science writer Ed Yong says the National Microbiome Initiative has three well-chosen themes. What are they? (FYI—Ed Yong also writes for Nat Geo!)
  • Collaboration. (The White House calls this “supporting interdisciplinary research.”) The NMI will bring together scientists and programs currently working on different aspects of microbiome research.
    • “For example, the National Institutes of Health will commit $20 million towards projects that draw comparisons between different ecosystems. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is investing $100 million in fighting childhood malnutrition and crop diseases by manipulating the respective microbiomes of guts and soils. One project talks about probiotics and microbiome transplants, but in the context of industrial plants, heat exchangers, and water treatment facilities.”
  • Tools. (The White House calls this “developing platform technologies.”) The NMI will help fund and develop tools to further microbiome research.
    • “This will include techniques that can analyze the entire genomes of specific microbes; track the movements of molecules between or within cells; and add, remove, edit, stimulate, or block specific species with precision. That will allow microbiologists to accurately simulate communities of microbes, predict how they will change over time, and then modify them accordingly.”
  • Recruitment. (The White House calls this “expanding the microbiome workforce.”) “By involving college students and citizen scientists, the project aims to have hundreds and thousands of people gathering data, and doing highly replicated experiments in different classrooms. This aspect of the NMI includes workshops, new career tracks, community projects (like a Microbiome Wikipedia edit-a-thon), and educational resources.”
    • FYI: For a great, fun example of citizen science in microbiome research, do some navel-gazing and check out belly button biodiversity!

TEACHERS TOOLKIT

The Atlantic: The White House Launches the National Microbiome Initiative

Nat Geo: Misunderstood Microbes

Nat Geo: Belly Button Biodiversity

The White House: FACT SHEET Announcing the National Microbiome Initiative