Genome Medicine is pleased to present a special issue entitled 'Translating the microbiome in health and disease,' guest edited by Dr. Ramnik Xavier of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Research efforts exploring the human microbiome using large-scale metagenomics and multi-omics have rapidly expanded, facilitating characterization of microbiome composition, dynamics, variation, and function in health and disease. Such studies are increasing our understanding of the microbiome’s impact on the immune response and other physiological processes, and further enabling a shift from correlation to causation, with emerging insights into how this data can be utilized for diagnostic and therapeutic benefit. These efforts also highlight the need for the standardization of microbiome research protocols in order to accelerate progress through collaborative research. This special issue aims to capture recent insights into all aspects of the human microbiome in health and disease including standards for microbiome analyses in basic and clinical research, microbiome analysis tools and technologies, metagenomics and integrative multi-omics, antibiotics and the microbiome, microbial biochemistry and diet, translational interventions, and host-microbiome interactions.
This collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process. The Guest Editor declares that they have no competing interests. Guest Editors serve an advisory role to guide the scope of the special issue and commissioned content; final editorial decisions lie with the Editor.