The Result of the Microbiome Poll

The results from 135 votes are:
 

What have we learned?

• The various comments confirm that the term microbiome means different things to different people.
  
  
• Lita points out that in the early days when HMP was formed, the NIH officially defined the human microbiome as “all of the microorganisms and their genes and genomes which make up the microbial communities that inhabit the human body.” It seems that they did not distinguish between option A and B but fused them together.
  
  
• Several commenters propose that the term refers to the whole ecosystem, not just the organisms. (Vicky, Pedro, Jacques). Biome alone means ecosystem but Rob points out that it depends on whether you parse microbiome “micro-biome” or “microbi-ome.” The latter may suggest that it’s another “-ome, sensu genome, transcriptome, etc. 
  
  
• Some prefer metagenome for option B (Mike, Pedro). Jonathan points out that it refers to non-microbial cases as well.
  
  
• Some suggest that there is no need to differentiate between options A and B (Christoph, Sponch) because most microbes have not been cultivated and are known from their genome. Ergo, their genome IS the organism.
  
  
• In keeping with the confusion, there is disagreement about whether microbiome and microbiota are synonymous.
   

In conclusion

The numbers indicate that there is no consensus about the usage of the term microbiome.  Option A gets more votes, but not by a huge factor. Thus, vox populi did not resolve the question. It remains open.

 
 

 
 

Comments

[Pedro]

"""Biome alone means ecosystem but Rob points out that it depends on whether you parse microbiome “micro-biome” or “microbi-ome.” The latter may suggest that it’s another “-ome, sensu genome, transcriptome, etc."""

A late comment, but may be useful for posterity. Although Rob did have a point regarding the parsing of the term "Microbiome", it should be mentioned that the term was originaly coined by Lederberg to mean "the ecological community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms that literally share our body space". He was referring to the *human* microbiome, but that's irrelevant. The relevant part is that the term was originally conceived as being based on the *biome* definition from Ecology. Therefore there is no doubt that the term means "all the microorganisms and their environment", and not a collection of genomes (that is the Metagenome of a Microbiome).

In my opinion, there is a lot of misuse of the term, and this should by no means be taken as meaning that the question "remains open".

Link to lederberg's article: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/13313/title/-Ome-Sweet--Omics---A-Genealogical-Treasury-of-Words/

My 2 cents.