{"id":929,"date":"2018-10-05T09:40:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T16:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/wordpress\/?p=929"},"modified":"2025-08-04T12:16:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T19:16:24","slug":"scientists-call-for-microbial-noahs-ark-to-protect-global-health-features-rob-knight-phd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/?p=929","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Call for Microbial &#8220;Noah&#8217;s Ark&#8221; to Protect Global Health"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><span style=\"color: #999999;\"><a style=\"color: #999999;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rutgers.edu\/news\/scientists-call-microbial-noahs-ark-protect-global-health\">Planet-wide loss of microbiota diversity is a health threat comparable to climate change<\/a><b><br \/>\n<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #999999;\">A Rutgers University\u2013New Brunswick-led team of researchers is calling for the creation of a <a style=\"color: #999999;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.microbiotavault.org\/\">global microbiota vault<\/a> to protect the long-term health of humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #999999;\">Such a Noah\u2019s Ark of beneficial germs would be gathered from human populations whose microbiomes are uncompromised by antibiotics, processed diets and other ill effects of modern society, which have contributed to a massive loss of microbial diversity and an accompanying rise in health problems. The human microbiome includes the trillions of microscopic organisms that live in and on our bodies, contributing to our health in a myriad of ways.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #999999;\">The researchers, who outline their proposal this week in the journal<em> <a style=\"color: #999999;\" href=\"http:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/lookup\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aau8816\">Science<\/a><\/em>, liken their idea to the <a style=\"color: #999999;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.croptrust.org\/our-work\/svalbard-global-seed-vault\/\">Svalbard Global Seed Vault<\/a>, the world\u2019s largest collection of crop diversity created in case of natural or human-made disasters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #999999;\">\u201cWe\u2019re facing a growing global health crisis, which requires that we capture and preserve the diversity of the human microbiota while it still exists,\u201d said <a style=\"color: #999999;\" href=\"http:\/\/dbm.rutgers.edu\/pages\/Maria_Gloria_Dominguez.html\">Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello<\/a>, the lead author and a professor in Rutgers\u2013New Brunswick\u2019s <a style=\"color: #999999;\" href=\"http:\/\/dbm.rutgers.edu\/\">Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology<\/a> and <a style=\"color: #999999;\" href=\"https:\/\/anthro.rutgers.edu\/\">Department of Anthropology<\/a>. \u201cThese microbes co-evolved with humans over hundreds of millennia. They help us digest food, strengthen our immune system and protect against invading germs. Over a handful of generations, we have seen a staggering loss in microbial diversity linked with a worldwide spike in immune and other disorders.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Planet-wide loss of microbiota diversity is a health threat comparable to climate change &nbsp; A Rutgers University\u2013New Brunswick-led team of researchers is calling for the creation of a global microbiota<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":931,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1617,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions\/1617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}