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This Perspective debates the concept of enterotypes and their use to characterize the gut microbiome, and provides a classifier and standardized methodology to aid cross-study comparisons.
This Perspective argues that Anna Karenina effects (that is, changes resulting in increased variation in community composition under stress) are a common and important response of animal microbiomes that have been under-reported.
This Perspective looks at how microbial anabolism and the soil microbial carbon pump control microbial necromass accumulation and stabilization; the ‘entombing effect’.
In this Perspective, Suez and Elinav describe the potential for therapeutic approaches based on the use of metabolites secreted, modulated or degraded by the gut microbiome, and issues that will be critical for their implementation.
This Perspective describes how lessons learned from traditional probiotics will inform the next generation of probiotics and live biotherapeutic products and the microorganisms suitable for development, and the regulatory framework required to do so.
Amalgamation of population genetic theory and models of horizontal gene transfer suggest that pangenomes in prokaryotes result from adaptive, not neutral, evolution.