PreMiEr Journal Club for Societal and Ethical Implications of Microbiome Research
The ERC for Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr) is an NSF-funded Engineering Research Center (ERC) based at Duke University.A Journal Club, created and managed by the PreMiEr Societal and Ethical Implications (SEI) Core, met regularly in the Spring of 2023 to discuss issues of concern to researchers in microbiome science. Discussions were open to members of PreMiEr from all participating institutions, and discussion sessions were led by both faculty and scholars (including graduate students and research staff).
The SEI Journal Club brought together members of PreMiEr’s greater community with the SEI Core leadership team to discuss issues that could affect the quality and design of microbiome research and the communities that the research might ultimately affect. It was hoped that by raising awareness of these issues through a journal club that PreMiEr researchers, and especially scholars, would incorporate best practices when designing and performing experiments, and be aware of pitfalls that might lead to harmful or erroneous conclusions. Furthermore, by spreading awareness of these issues through the Journal Club and summaries of those discussions through an internal newsletter and website, the SEI Core has become more integrated within a number of PreMiEr research projects.
The PreMiEr ERC’s mission to improve the health of people through manipulation of the microbes in the built environment raises a number of ethical concerns, not only regarding the mechanisms by which this goal might be achieved, but also how such efforts might impact the people inhabiting those spaces, and additionally it extends to issues of privacy and social justice.
The initial session, led by Dr. Joe Brown of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explored responsible and ethical conduct of research and the transparency of that research to stakeholders, and provided recommendations for involving communities in the conduct of research from the beginning (e.g., Community-Based Participatory Research). A two-part discussion led by North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Professor Dr. Joseph Graves Jr. and North Carolina State University graduate student Andrew Hardwick explored the issue of how “ghost variables” such as race are treated in microbiome studies. One session discussed a list of recommendations concerning the use of population descriptors, such as race, genetic ancestry, genetic similarities, and genetic ancestry groups in genomic studies, which led to a vigorous debate on the applicability of these recommendations to microbiome studies when considering the inherent differences between the human microbiome and genome. The SEI Core, and its outreach through the SEI Journal Club, is an essential part of PreMiEr, and its work is necessary to faithfully and ethically execute and evaluate the research performed through the ERC.
