Ecology and Medicine Converge at the Microbiome-Host Interface

The human body is home to a dense and diverse population of bacteria, viruses, and eukaryotes, collectively termed the microbiome. Research on host-microbiome interactions continuously demonstrates the importance of this microbial community to human physiology and its involvement in a myriad of diseases. This, in turn, sparks great interest in developing means for beneficially modulating the microbiome, such as fecal microbiome transplantation and probiotics. However, these interventions show mixed efficacy in clinical trials and raise safety concerns. How these exogenous microorganisms interact with the microbiome might underlie the efficacy and safety of these therapeutics, yet the signaling mechanisms mediating microbe-microbe interactions between human-dwelling commensals are poorly understood. In this commentary, we discuss known and putative mechanisms of interactions between commensals in the gut and how they can be harnessed for improving microbiome-targeting therapeutics and facilitating translation of microbiome research to the clinic.