Canadian Microbiome Resource (CanMoR)

It is extraordinary that it has taken so long for the healthcare field to recognize the potential of beneficial microbes. Until now, it has been their harmful effects that have so captivated humanity, rightfully given the hundreds of millions of lives lost to microbial diseases. The change operating presently is a growing appreciation for the varied roles that microbes play in all aspects of life. The microbiome is everywhere in land, sea and air, and consists largely of microorganisms that can be identified through sophisticated modern technologies: close to 90% of these have never been cultured, sequenced or put in a repertoire. Humans, as a supraorganism, are a composite of their genomes, epigenomes and microbiomes with multiple interactions with the microbial environments we live in. A better understanding of this complex ecosystem will have a phenomenal impact on health. The microbiome is associated with an increasing number of unmet medical needs and it is imperative that new approaches include microbiome studies and experimentations. These must be systematically and rigorously evaluated. To achieve this vision, standardization of methods is essential starting with the preparation of samples for the different omics approaches. Most importantly analyses components should be readily available, standardized, validated, comprehensive and the access to these pipelines streamlined to allow comparison between studies. The computational component is presently the bottleneck.