Prioritizing precision: guidelines for the better use of population descriptors in human microbiome research

Microbiome science is a celebration of the connections between humans, our environment, and microbial organisms. We are continually learning more about our microbial fingerprint, how each microbiome may respond to identical stimuli differently, and how the quality of the environmental conditions around us influences the microorganisms we encounter and acquire. However, in this process of self-discovery, we have utilized socially constructed ideas about ourselves as biological factors, potentially obscuring the true nature of our relationships to each other, microbes, and the planet. The concept of race, which has continuously changing definitions over hundreds of years, is frequently operationalized as a proxy for biological variation and suggested to have a real impact on the microbiome. Scientists across disciplines and through decades of research have misused race as a biological determinant, resulting in falsely scientific justifications for social and political discrimination. However, concepts of race and ethnicity are highly nuanced, inconsistent, and culturally specific. Without training, microbiome researchers risk continuing to misconstrue these concepts as fixed biological factors that have direct impacts on our microbiomes and/or health. In 2023, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released recommendations on the use of population descriptors such as race and ethnicity in genetic science. In this paper, we posit similar recommendations that can and must be translated into microbiome science to avoid re-biologizing race and that push us toward the goal of understanding the microbiome as an engine of adaptation to help us thrive in a dynamic world.