PreMiEr’s microbiome engineering  framework will enable the development of a wide range of transformative technologies that solve societal challenges at the interface of health and the environment. However, the dissemination of these same technologies is not without risk as it relies on the responsible development and societal acceptance of microbiome engineering approaches. This project will develop an agenda for research on the ethical, societal, and policy aspects of PreMiEr’s evolving microbiome engineering discoveries and methods for integration of SEI into PreMiEr’s work.

In microbiome research there has been the emergence of “ghost variables”. These variables (as outlined in De Wolfe et al., 2021) are cases where in place of explicit terms like environmental racism, researchers use implicit terms to discuss socially defined groups through terms like nationality, developer/underdeveloped, or western. These implicit terms run the risk of reinforcing biological essentialist beliefs about socially constructed groups like race or gender. This project will systematically gather and analyze literature from researchers, research institutions, national agencies, news media, etc. and partner with the data analytics team to develop recommendations for researchers to avoid the use of ghost variables in their own research.

Developments to understand and engineer microbiomes are developing swiftly. From an oversight perspective, the current state-of-the-science of precision microbiome engineering comes with significant uncertainty within and across expert groups. This project will identigy areas of stakeholder disagreement and uncertainty to prioritize future research trajectories and address information needs while anticipating and preparing for how the larger citizenry will come to learn about, and make sense of, microbiome engineering.