Mechanism (biology)

Philosophy

Causation

Biology

Social psychology

Computer science

Computational biology

Evolutionary biology

Enthusiasm

Genetics

Microbiome

Physics

Bioinformatics

Psychology

Optics

Epistemology

Focus (optics)

Data science

Artificial intelligence

Perspective (graphical)

Cell

There is tremendous enthusiasm for the microbiome in academia and industry. This Perspective argues that in order to realize its potential, the field needs to focus on establishing causation and molecular mechanism with an emphasis on phenotypes that are large in magnitude, easy to measure, and unambiguously driven by the microbiota.

Microbiome: Focus on Causation and Mechanism