George A. O’Toole of Dartmouth College, incoming co-director of the MBL Microbial Diversity course, writes about changes (and constancies) in the study of microbiology on the “Small Things Considered” blog.

For the past 4 years I have been serving as a faculty instructor for the Microbial Diversity Course at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole. I noticed something striking this year. As we went around the room and students described their current projects, a full 50% used the word “microbiome” as part of their research description, and another three talked about their interests in soil microbial communities. Four years ago, only one student used the word microbiome and soil communities were not mentioned, at least that I can recall. Read more …