Contrary to microbiomes, microbial blends are exact and reproducible, originating from microorganisms cultivable in vitro. Most frequently, microbial blends are composed of a mixture of bacterial species or strains (Voges et al., 2019), although those based on fungal species (Del Frari et al., 2019) or a combination of fungi and bacteria (Shahab et al., 2018) are becoming increasingly popular. Unlike microbiomes, microbial blends are intelligently designed to study their component behavior (e.g., ecological studies) or to carry out well-defined tasks (e.g., biotechnology and biological control). Moreover, the composition of microbiomes is known to vary in time and space, complicating the access to reliable and stable sources of specific microbiomes (Lawson et al., 2019 Berg et al., 2020). Microbiomes are often composed of hundreds, if not thousands, of species of microorganisms, many of which have not yet been identified (e.g., uncultivable species) and many more are found in very low abundances (rare taxa). Despite these promising results, there are numerous limitations still preventing the full exploitation of this technology. In another study, a soil microbiome transplantation significantly decreased the disease incidence in the Solanum lycopersicum– Ralstonia solanacearum pathosystem (Wei et al., 2019). For example, leaf endophytes of healthy Phyllostegia hirsuta were transferred on Phyllostegia kaalaensis leaves, significantly reducing disease severity caused by Neoerysiphe galeopsidis (Zahn and Amend, 2017). Microbiome transplants have been successfully tested also in plant protection. ![]() This technique is currently used to treat recurrent Clostridium difficile infections, and it showed promising results in treating inflammatory bowel diseases (Vindigni and Surawicz, 2017). One of the most popular examples is that of fecal transplants in humans. The employment of microbiomes to produce positive effects on individuals or environments has been recently proven possible. The acquired awareness over the role that microbial communities play in the health of biological systems led to the search for strategies to exploit microbiomes and microbial blends to achieve specific goals, such as restoring compromised systems (e.g., reversing a condition of dysbiosis) or enhancing existing ones. However, in recent years, microbiome research has branched out into a new direction. Undoubtedly, much research has yet to be carried out to further understand the composition, functions, and resilience to stressors of microbiomes (e.g., anthropic activities and climate change). In fact, the disruption of microbial homeostasis leads to dysbiosis, a condition which plays a major role in disease in humans and other animals (Liu et al., 2020), and decline in plants (Bettenfeld et al., 2020). Recent research demonstrated that microbiomes play a key role in the health of the organisms whom they are associated with, influencing, among others, their physiology, biochemistry, and reproductive success (Dinan and Cryan, 2017 Bai et al., 2020 Compant et al., 2020). Over the last decade, advancements in next-generation sequencing allowed for a new understanding of the microbial complexity tightly associated with living beings and environments. However, as its popularity increased, numerous definitions for the word microbiome appeared in scientific literature, sparking a hot debate over the birth and evolution of the meaning of this word (Prescott, 2017 Morar and Bohannan, 2019 Berg et al., 2020). ![]() Four years after Lederberg's publication, the word microbiome began to be employed in the scientific literature (Nicholson et al., 2005), and to date, it has been used in tens of thousands of scientific publications. This definition became especially popular as, over the following years, its meaning shifted from the organisms as taxonomical units (i.e., microbiota) to their collective genetic material. One of the most cited, albeit not the earliest (Whipps et al., 1988), was that introduced by Joshua Lederberg, who referred to the microbiome as “the ecological community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms that literally share our body space ” (Lederberg and Mccray, 2001). Over the last 20 years, numerous definitions have been proposed for the term microbiome (Berg et al., 2020).
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