Microbiome Stewardship Research Team
What is “microbiome stewardship”?
Microbiome stewardship is the broad idea that we need to consider ecosystem-level factors when we think about public health, as our environment, behaviors, and public policy affects interactions between microbes and human health. Microbiomes are highly dynamic systems, featuring bacteria, archaea, protozoa, fungi, and viruses; and our personal microbiomes are derived from a larger shared, collective microbial resource.
The importance of the human microbiome (the bacteria, fungi, archaea, protozoa, and viruses that we directly and indirectly interact with throughout our lives) for health and well-being has been well established. However, despite their demonstrated impact, there is limited information on the interconnectivity of non-host habitats (e.g., the built environment or other less intensively managed environments) and their collective contributions to human health. This includes interactions across scales such as with others in shared spaces, cultural and dietary practices, food systems and industrialized food processes, natural environments, built environments, and air pollution.
The concept of the collective microbiome reinforces the idea of microbiomes as a public good from which all humans, plants, and animals derive benefit. Deterioration of the collective microbiome, and the increasing prevalence of microbiome dysbiosis in humans and elsewhere, is the least well-understood but the most-important facet of biodiversity loss and ecosystem health decline. Microbiome stewardship recognizes the necessity of microbial communities in sustaining human health, and emphasizes the imperative to protect them through policy and other action. Recognizing the importance of microbiome stewardship is a critical step, but we also lack the clear articulation needed to guide its implementation in policy and practice. We need a broadly applicable and inclusive definition of microbiome stewardship, a framework that can guide principles for implementation, and tools to assess microbiome health and to support informed decision making.
Kieran C. O’Doherty
Dr. Kieran C. O’Doherty is professor in the department of psychology at the University of Guelph, where he directs the Discourse, Science, Publics research Group. His research focuses on the social and ethical implications of science and technology and public engagement on science and technology. He has published on such topics as data governance, vaccines, human tissue biobanks, the human microbiome, salmon genomics, and genetic testing. A particular emphasis of his research is on theory and methods of public deliberation, in which members of the public are involved in collectively developing recommendations for the governance of science & technology. Recent edited volumes include Psychological Studies of Science and Technology(2019) and The Sage Handbook of Applied Social Psychology (2019). He is editor of Theory & Psychology.
Rob Beiko
Dr. Rob Beiko, is a Professor and Head of the Algorithms and Bioinformatics research cluster in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. His research aims to understand microbial diversity and evolution using machine learning, phylogenetics, time-series algorithms, and visualization techniques. His group is developing software tools and pipelines to comprehensively survey genes and mobile genetic elements in bacterial genomes, and understand how these genomes have been shaped by vertical inheritance, recombination, and lateral gene transfer. He is also a co-founder of Dartmouth Ocean Technologies, Inc., a developer of environmental DNA sampling devices.
Sue Ishaq
Dr. Sue Ishaq is an Associate Professor of Microbiomes, University of Maine; and founded MSE in 2020. She received her doctorate in Animal, Nutrition and Food Science from the University of Vermont in 2015 where she focused on the rumen microbiology of the moose. She held post-doctoral positions at Montana State University, and a research faculty position at the University of Oregon. Over the years, her research has gone from wild animal gut microbiomes, to soils, to buildings, and back to the gut. Since 2019, her lab in Maine focuses on host-associated microbial communities in animals and humans, and in particular, how host and microbes interact in the gut and can be harnessed to reduce inflammation. She is also the early-career At Large member of the Board of Directors for the American Society for Microbiology, 2024- 2027.
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Emma AllenVercoe
Dr. Emma AllenVercoe is a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Guelph, and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Gut Microbiome Function and Host Interactions. Her research portfolio is broad, encompassing host-pathogen interplay, live microbial products as therapeutic agents, gut microbiome and anaerobic culture (humans and animals), and the study of ‘missing gut microbes’ i.e. those that are present in hunter-gatherer societies but missing in the industrialized world. She has developed the Robogut – a culture system that allows for the growth of gut microbial communities in vitro, and is currently busy a centre for microbiome culture and preservation at the University of Guelph.
Mallory Choudoir
Dr. Mallory Choudoir is an Assistant Professor & Soil Microbiome Extension Specialist in the Department of Plant & Microbial Biology at North Carolina State University. The goal of her applied research and extension program is to translate microbiome science to sustainable agriculture. She aims to develop microbial-centered solutions for optimizing crop productivity, reducing agronomic inputs, and enhancing agroecosystem resilience to climate change.
Diego Silva
Dr Diego Silva, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Bioethics at Sydney Health Ethics and the University of Sydney School of Public Health. His research centers on public health ethics, particularly the application of political theory in the context of infectious diseases and health security, e.g., tuberculosis, COVID-19, antimicrobial resistance, etc. He is currently the outgoing Chair and a member of the Public Health Ethics Consultative Group at the Public Health Agency of Canada and works with the World Health Organization on various public health ethics topics on an ad hoc basis.
Funding
Project Title: Articulating Microbiome Stewardship: Definition, Guiding Principles, Framework
Principal Investigator: Kieran O’Doherty, University of Guelph Co-Principal Investigators: Rob Beiko, Dalhousie University; Suzanne Ishaq, University of Maine Co-Investigators: Emma Allen-Vercoe, University of Guelph; Mallory Choudoir, North Carolina State University; Diego Silva, The University of Sydney School of Public Health
Funding Agency: Canadian Institutes of Health Research
This project aims to establish a comprehensive framework for microbiome stewardship. By developing a clear definition and set of guiding principles, the research team seeks to provide a foundation for sustainable policy and practice. A collaborative effort involving interviews, workshops, and stakeholder engagement, this work addresses the growing need for collective strategies to support human and environmental health through responsible microbiome management.