Microbe experts from around the world are setting up a formal collaboration to study the organisms that live in and on humans.
The International Human Microbiome Consortium, announced on 16 October, involves geneticists and bacteriologists from more than a dozen countries. The researchers will look at the role of the microbiome — the microorganisms that dwell in and on the body and that vastly outnumber the body's own cells — in health and disease.
The consortium's two most prominent projects are a five-year initiative funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to genetically sequence microbes living in the mouth, skin, nose, vagina and faeces; and a four-year, European Commission scheme to analyse the gut flora of people living in Spain and Denmark to find microbial links to obesity and inflammatory bowel disease.
The NIH has pledged US$115 million to the overall initiative and European collaborators have committed €20 million (US$27 million). Other countries will provide smaller sums.
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Initiative waives human life in favour of life on humans. Nature 455, 1021 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/4551021a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/4551021a