Translating our microbiome into medicine.

e live in amicrobialworld.We are surrounded provides an inventory of the complete genetic potential by and in contact with microbes that support W many natural and managed processes, from carbon capture by microalgae to support marine food webs, to the fermentations that produce beverages and foods thatwe consume and enjoy.Nor is our body a sterile environment, either inside or out. While it has long been recognised that animals, including humans, are colonised soon after birth (or hatching), changes in our perceptions of the humanmicrobiota have arisen over the past decade via the step advances made in DNA and RNA amplification methods, sequencing technologies and computational biology —what has been referred as the “omics” era of research. All these approaches support an assessment of the microbial world without first having to culture microbes in a laboratory setting, and the capacity to characterise both the structure and function of entire microbial communities from real-world samples.