Caveat fermentor

Four papers published this quarter have called out caveats in translational microbiome research, and proposed solutions to improve experimental design in the field. The papers identified hurdles in characterizing microbiome-phenotype relationships, quantifying microbiotic load, choosing the right diet in animal studies and reproducing microbial analyses.

The collective push for more causative, quantitative, standardized and reproducible microbiome analyses is good news for a sprawling field trying to create therapies based on a new modality that has little precedent in drug development and an unknown set of rules...