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White House launches national initiative to study microbiomes

Xinhua, May 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

The White House on Friday launched an ambitious national initiative to study microbiomes, the billions of microorganisms that live in places like human body, soil and air.

Jo Handelsman, associate director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said that the National Microbiome Initiative (NMI) aims to advance understanding of microbiomes in order to aid in the development of useful applications in areas such as health care, food production, and environmental restoration.

"The launch of the NMI marks a milestone for microbiome science," Handelsman wrote in a blog post. "We expect that by accelerating progress in this important field, the NMI will deliver considerable benefits to our planet and those who inhabit it."

According to a fact sheet released by the White House, microbiomes influence the behavior of diverse ecosystems, with effects on human health, climate change, food security, and other factors.

Specially, the fact sheet linked imbalanced microbiomes to human chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and asthma; local ecological disruptions such as the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico and reductions in agricultural productivity.

The new initiative, according to the White House, will have three goals, including supporting interdisciplinary research, developing platform technologies, and expanding the microbiome workforce.

To kick off the NMI, the U.S. government pledged to invest more than 121 million U.S. dollars over the next two years, while dozens of universities and research organizations will pour in an additional 400 million dollars in financial and in-kind contributions.

For instance, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will invest 100 million dollars over four years to investigate and develop tools to study human and agricultural microbiomes.

The U.S. government has been investing in microbiome for many years. A report released in 2015 showed that annual federal investment in this field tripled between 2012 and 2014, with a total of 922 million dollars invested during this three-year period. Enditem