Today, on June 27th, we celebrate World Microbiome Day. This year’s theme is Celebration of the Microbial World. At UNLOCK, we never celebrate alone: Microbes (and scientists) work together! In this final blog of a series on microbial team play, we explain why it’s not all about talent and what we’re planning to do with all these microbial teams. We also emphasize once more why team play is key.
By the UNLOCK team / June 27, 2022 (World Microbiome Day)
KEY MESSAGES
- Microbes are everywhere, but only 1% of their talent has been discovered so far.
- Microbes are natural team players. That’s why UNLOCK aims to investigate microbes in the context of their “community” or team. Their true talent might remain uncovered when they are forced to play by themselves.
- Multiple ways hold the key to identifying the right talent and composing a dream team.
- These dream teams can be used to investigate host-microbe interactions; clean wastewater or recover valuable resources from waste streams.
- On World Microbiome Day (June 27) we celebrate microbial communities. Team play is key!
It’s not only about talent
From lab to real life
So far, we have mainly discussed the research done at UNLOCK – in a lab environment. But what are all these talented teams actually used for? In our blogs, we mentioned different kinds of team sports: cycling, soccer and even a relay combination of sports. As explained in the first part, a soccer coach is looking for different talents than the coach of a cycling team. Similarly, the microbial teams investigated at UNLOCK have different applications. For instance, recently, researchers from UNLOCK composed a microbial team representing the human intestinal microbiota. This community increases our understanding of the team play in our intestinal tract and, moreover, the role these microbial teams play for our health. Other microbial teams that can be explored at UNLOCK are, for example, communities used to treat wastewater or those used to recover valuable resources from waste streams. Each team requires different types of talents from different microbial species.
Other examples of team play
Team play is not only valuable in the microbial communities that UNLOCK works with. Also the scientists working at the facility, operate in teams. They form a multidisciplinary team with a lot of (complementary) expertise. If you want to know who we are exactly, please visit our team page.
Let’s celebrate World Microbiome Day together!
- Lead image based on photo by Anna Shvets via Pexels