When microbiologist Mathilde Poyet and medical bioinformatician Mathieu Groussin first met as postdocs in Eric Alm’s microbiome lab at MIT in 2014, they realized two things. First, the lack of diversity in the microbiome data they were using made it nearly impossible for them to study anything but white people in industrialized communities, and therefore, the applicability of their work would be limited. Indeed, studies have found that data gathered from industrialized countries are unfit for creating therapies or microbiome-based treatments for use elsewhere. Second, they realized that they could do something about it.
Teaming up, the two embarked on a worldwide mission to recruit a greater variety of people to be represented in microbiome research. Groussin and Poyet have traveled to dozens of countries over the past six years to work with local scientists and communities, set up microbiome sample collections, and store them in a biobank. Their project ...
