The National Microbiome Initiative

We squeezed together under a small roof near the guard station just outside of the White House to avoid the drenching rain. There was excitement in the air as we waited for the launch of The National Microbiome Initiative (https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/05/13/announcing-national-microbiome-initiative). I thought about the cloud of microbes surrounding each of us and how with something as simple as a breath or a handshake, our microbiomes were intermingling. Nature might have selected for such exchanges as a means to maintain the diversity of our microbiomes, but a microbial interchange with people gathered from around the country was definitely not in our evolutionary past.