#EBW26 Editorial: MICROBE – MICRObiome Biobanking (RI) Enabler

This article comes from the MICROBE team. You can read about the project here .

Microbiomes comprise communities of microorganisms (i.e., bacteria, archaea, protists, fungi and microalgae) and their “theatre of activity” (i.e., structural elements, metabolites, signal molecules, mobile genetic elements (such as viruses), as well as surrounding environmental conditions)¹. They are in and on humans, animals, soil, water, and plants.

Microbiomes play a key role in maintaining life on Earth by providing a range of essential ecosystem services and are indispensable for the functioning and health of humans, animals, andplants^2,3. There is a wide consensus that by harnessing microbiome functions, society would be better placed to tackle global challenges such as food security, health and wellbeing, food waste management, and climate change mitigation⁴. This has led to an increasing interest in the microbiomes, also in the context of the One Health concept⁵. 

Microbiomes, characterised by their innate complexity, pose an entirely new set of challenges for the research community and biobanking infrastructures. The biggest technological bottlenecks are the development of optimised methodologies for preserving microbiomes and assessing the success of preservation in terms of maintained composition and functionality of microbiomes⁶. There is also an imminent need to establish of a unified data infrastructure to support microbiome research and innovation, and to implement standardisation across sectors⁷.

MICROBE addresses these issues with the aim of delivering technical solutions for microbiome preservation, propagation, and functionality assessment that enable optimal collection and preservation of microbiome samples and allow targeted isolation of microbiome members that retain the functional diversity of original microbiomes. Overall, MICROBE’s goal is to provide a comprehensive operational blueprint for the establishment of a microbiome biobanking infrastructure, including technological requirements, methodological workflows, data pipelines, pre-analytical sample quality requirements for standardisation, legal and ethical guidelines, and business opportunities.

The insights and the results gained in the MICROBE project over the past three years will be shared and discussed with the biobanking community in the scope of a dedicated EBW26 workshop to ensure that community needs are properly addressed and that developed solutions are efficiently taken up by the infrastructures themselves and their user communities.

Project outcome examples

• A trait-based framework to identify microbial keystone taxa for microbiome engineering – ScienceDirect
• Policy in practice: How to “do” the Nagoya Protocol: common misconceptions, challenges and best practices for access and benefit-sharing compliance | Sustainable Microbiology | Oxford Academic
• Policy Briefing: From access to use – Untangling the international legal frameworks that govern microbial resources | Sustainable Microbiology | Oxford Academic
• Guidance document for the standardised pre-analytic workflow in selected microbiome fields 

References

1 Berg et al., Microbiome (2020), doi: 10.1186/s40168-020-00875-0 

2 EU Science & Innovation (2019), https://youtu.be/cjGMazveejE

3 Stark, CBE: Life Sciences Education (2010), doi: 10.1187/cbe.10-09-0119 

4 d’Hondt et al., Nature Microbiology (2021), doi: 10.1038/s41564-020-00857-w 

5 Ling-chao Ma et al., Science in One Health (2023), doi.org/10.1016/j.soh.2023.100037

6 Ryan et al., Trends in Microbiology (2021), doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2021.01.009 

7 Ryan et al., Environmental Microbiology (2021), doi: 10.1111/1462-2920.15323