Welcome to the Microbiome is at the top of my list of recommended books about the human microbiome. Written by scientists and museum curators, Dr. Susan Perkins and Dr. Rob DeSalle to accompany the American Museum of Natural History’s microbiome exhibit “The Secret World Inside You”, Welcome to the Microbiome, introduces readers to not only to the human microbiome, but also to the science behind the research. It is aimed at people interested in the process and findings of the newly emerging field of microbiome biology and its importance for human existence and health. This book introduces anyone interested in basic cell biology, genomics, and microbiology to these subjects while weaving stories about human-microbiome interactions.
Good Microbiome “Crash Course”
Welcome to the Microbiome, is chock-full of fabulous stories about the human microbiome. Like many other recent books, such as the Good Gut, Missing Microbes, and Rob Knight’s TED talk book – Follow Your Gut, human microbiome stories are put into a larger context of the environment, today’s lifestyle choices, and health. Welcome to the Microbiome is unique in that it gives readers a scientific background to understand the stories and covers a diversity of human microbiomes in addition to the gut microbiome most other microbiome books focus upon.
What is unique about Welcome to the Microbiome is that the first few chapters give a reader crash courses in introductory biology and microbiology. I found this background refreshing since it empowers readers to better understand how microbiome stories are put together and what it means in a greater scientific context. Popular articles and other books about the microbiome give the findings and author’s interpretations, but don’t go through why or how the scientists reached their conclusions. Considering the increase in citizen science microbiome projects and public interest, understanding the science underlying human microbiome research is important as people examine their own data.
The first 2 chapters mirror an introductory biology class. They include topics such as how proteins are made from DNA, how cells function, and fundamental concepts in genetics in an engaging way. If it’s been a while since you’ve had general biology or microbiology as an undergraduate or never taken such classes, the first two chapters will give you a background that will help you understand microbiome science, as well as other biology and genetics.
The remaining chapters are primers about the human microbiome. They explore the basic biology underlying microbiome science, how microbiome findings have changed the way we think of human health, and how we interact with microbes. These include discussions of the microbial ecology that has really changed the way people think about microbe-animal interactions.
Additional Directions
While I think Welcome to the Microbiome is fantastic and unique in that it provides crash courses to help the reader better understand microbiome science, it could go one step further. Walking citizen scientist readers through the different kinds of figures and ways that microbiome scientists present their data would be helpful. Readers of Welcome to the Microbiome may read the primary microbiome literature or have had their own personal microbiomes by the American Gut project, Private Biome or µBiome. Understanding the data delivered from these citizen science microbiome projects is not always clear to the consumer, so an additional chapter would have been the icing on the cake. That being said, it was quite a filling and tasty “cake” as it is.
Within the university system, Welcome to the Microbiome would be an excellent book to use in an undergraduate course focused on the microbiome or accompanying a seminar course on the primary literature. Outside academia and in addition to individual readers, I could see Welcome to the Microbiome being read for book clubs associated with some of the public science spaces, like the Baltimore Under Ground Science Space, we have in Baltimore. Of course, coupling reading this book with a visit to AMNH’s “The Secret World Inside You” is ideal. It was certainly worth our trip!
What do you think?
Have you read Welcome to the Microbiome or visited “The Secret World Inside You”?
Let me know in the comments section below or send an email to mostlymicrobes at gmail dot com.
Have not yet read, but it looks PERFECT. Years ago read a couple of Lynn Margulis’ books and was gob-smacked to learn about symbiosis…. have been fascinated since. As a retiree now, I want to go back to university and learn more; this sounded like a great place to start getting my feet wet. Don’t have a formal science background, so am particularly pleased that the first 2 chapters are textbook…
V. excited, thank you for your review, I wasn’t sure where to begin reading.
Hi Lynetta, oh yes! Lynn Margulis is one of my science heroines! Her early work, especially was fabulous! Did you read “Symbiotic Planet”? I loved hearing more about her life as she pulled together her ideas and fought against the dogma of the day.
Let me know what you think of “Welcome to the Microbiome”. If you want a book more about microbes in general with a textbook level of detail, but written well and for the public put “Understanding Microbes’ by Jeremy Dale on your list! I’m overdue for writing a review of it!
Thank you so much, Anne! Dale’s book is now on my list! Can’t wait for ‘Welcome to the Biome’ to arrive so I can dig in!
Yes, did read Symbiotic Planet and my mind exploded! I call her one of my ‘culture heroes’ which is a category more expansive than science heroes, since I don’t know enough science to break it down that way!
Fabulous! Symbiotic Planet exploded my brain too. As a woman in science, I remember first hearing about Lynn’s “radical” idea about mitochondria and how she struggled to get it accepted because the idea of two different organisms working together and evolving together was so radical and contrary to the established “competition – nature, red in tooth and claw”. Reading that she wrote them on BED REST WITH TWINS and sent the book off to something like 27 or 30 different publishers before it was accepted – WOW. That inspired me that I too could be a mom and a scientist.
Thank you for your comments, you’re helping me realize how much I need to write about her.
Do let me know what you think about both books. If you need more science book recs, let me know. I’m currently reading a lot of pandemic and virus lay books thanks to SARS-CoV2. Happy reading!