Concepts and criteria defining emerging microbiome applications

Abstract

In recent years, microbiomes and their potential applications for human, animal or plant health, food production and environmental management came into the spotlight of major national and international policies and strategies. This has been accompanied by substantial R&D investments in both public and private sectors, with an increasing number of products entering the market. Despite widespread agreement on the potential of microbiomes and their uses across disciplines, stakeholders and countries, there is no consensus on what defines a microbiome application. This often results in non-comprehensive communication or insufficient documentation making commercialisation and acceptance of the novel products challenging. To showcase the complexity of this issue we discuss two selected, well-established applications and propose criteria defining a microbiome application and their conditions of use for clear communication, facilitating suitable regulatory frameworks and building trust among stakeholders.

FIGURE 1

Overview of different microbiome approaches in relation to the underlying knowledge and probability of success (i.e., the probability to reproducibly elicit a targeted beneficial effect). The proposed threshold for defining microbiome applications is based on the current level of knowledge and selected to distinguish between natural fluctuations or black box approaches and targeted, knowledge‐based interventions. It is to be expected that some of the microbiome applications, listed in Table 1 as semi‐targeted, within the next few years may move to the category of precision microbiome applications for the benefit of people, animals, plants and soil.