Celebrating World Microbiome Day with the world's first holobiont data portal

World Microbiome Day, happening annually on June 27th, aims to raise awareness about the crucial role of microbes. As an institution committed to advancing microbiome research, Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics (CEH) took this opportunity to highlight its important contributions and engage with fellow researchers as well as the wider scientific and public community.

Healthier food for a healthier planet

This year's theme was “Food and Microbes” making it the perfect opportunity to share highlights from some of our large EU projects working on improving food production by applying a hologenomic approach. Hence throughout the day, our Twitter and LinkedIn accounts were abuzz with a series of informative posts and captivating visuals, shedding light on our amazing researchers and research assistants ongoing research on microbes related to food. 

Our large Horizon 2020 EU project HoloFood came to an end in June and celebrated some of its amazing achievements on World Microbiome Day. The project highlighted one of the project grand deliverables: a hologenomics data portal. The data portal is the first of its kind providing free comprehensive biomolecular data for researchers to understand the microbial diversity in chicken and salmon gut, and how changes in diet affect animal health.

Free holobiont data for a more sustainable future

The HoloFood data portal consists of hologenomic data from not only the host organisms but also all of its associated microbes (together the holobiont) for researchers to explore more sustainable feed alternatives for chicken and salmon. This Hologenomics insight has the potential to increase both the health of the animals and to make the agriculture and aquaculture industries more sustainable.  Read more about the HoloFood project and the data portal here.

Chicken, salmon, barley and yoghurt

CEH further showcased some of our cutting-edge research into the microbiomes of various animal and plant species, including chicken, salmon and barley - from the HoloFood, 3D'omics and BarleyMicroBreed projects - underscoring the importance of understanding these microbial communities for animal and crop health, conservation, and a more sustainable aquaculture and agriculture. 

Another exciting focus for some of our researchers is exploring microbes in fermented foods including traditional yoghurt. They explore the ecology and evolution of microbes in fermented foods as they are key to understanding how fermented foods might influence our health.

We hope that our social media campaign not only celebrated World Microbiome Day but also inspired researchers and foundations worldwide to further explore the wonders of the microbiome and the field of hologenomics and its implications for One Health and that the HoloFood data portal will prove useful to future research within this exciting groundbreaking field of hologenomics.

Follow CEH on our Twitter and LinkedIn accounts for more exciting updates.

Contact:

Communication responsible Christina Noer

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