Good germs, bad germs: A participatory model for mapping the domestic microbiome

Humans are riddled with life. Our bodies, homes and cities support myriad microbial biodiversity. These are generally thought of as disease-causing 'germs' that should be eradicated. But recent developments in metagenomics - the sequencing of genetic material taken from the environment - have begun to reveal the ubiquity and functional importance of the 'human microbiome': the microbial life in, on and around us. Metagenomics helps identify extensive changes in these hitherto invisible worlds with possible implications for human health. Some, like allergy, autoimmunity and antibiotic resistance, have been linked to modern hygiene practices.

There is a growing popular and policy interest in the microbiome, and the possibilities of more nuanced or 'probiotic' ways of living with germs. To date however there has been limited public engagement with the science and technology of metagenomics and its potentially transformative means of representing the microbiome. This project will address this gap. Through an in-depth investigation of domestic kitchen practices, it will explore the transformative potential of metagenomics for developing new public understandings of domestic hygiene.

The project research design will combine ethnographic methods with laboratory techniques, through a year long collaboration with twelve households from an urban neighbourhood. These households will be asked to survey their domestic microbiome once a month for nine months, undertaking nine metaphorical microbial safaris. The focus of these safaris will emerge from a negotiation informed by our participants' interests, relevant academic literatures and the specific concerns and expertise of our project partners. Each month we will collaboratively design a range of safe, 'antibiotic' and 'probiotic' kitchen experiments - for example involving cleaning practices and products, food preparation or sampling possible sources of kitchen microbes (e.g. pets, gardens, groceries or cars). The gathered samples will be sequenced for subsequent participatory analysis and visualisation.

The outcomes and implications of each experiment will be discussed at monthly group meetings, facilitated by members of the project team, alongside project partners and invited experts. This project involves a partnership with the Food Standards Agency and aims to explore the implications of public engagements with the domestic microbiome for a range of stakeholders responsible for or interested in the management of domestic hygiene. Our participatory model will be outlined in a user report and through a practitioners' workshop. The project will deliver an extensive public database of biological and qualitative data on kitchen practices and microbiologies. It will present a range of academic outputs exploring the transformative implications of participatory metagenomics for the social and biological sciences.

Good germs, bad germs will demonstrate the potential of interdisciplinary research and participatory approaches to transform how publics, policy makers and academics perceive, engage with and seek to govern microbial life. While its substantive findings will be of direct relevance to understanding the domestic microbiome, the participatory model developed through the project has great potential for future transformative research into the microbiomes of further elements of the built environment (e.g. hospitals, schools, money, transport infrastructure) as well as the intimate spaces of the human body, like the gut.

This project seeks to demonstrate the potential of metagenomics for developing new public understandings and behaviours in relation to the microbiome. We are also committed to engaging with a wide range of people beyond the academy, including policy makers, industry, charities and the general public.

Public impacts. The project research design will provide our research participants with access to scientific techniques and methods for understanding the microbial world around them. It will empower them to collaborate in the design of kitchen experiments and in the visualisation and analysis of their results. These experiments will provide participants with new ways to visualize, engage and discuss microbial activity. This will inform how they understand and respond to microbial threats (e.g. pathogens) and opportunities (e.g. probiotics) and how they assess the claims made by (sometimes conflicting) groups of experts. The project offers participants an opportunity to feed into the FSA (and other users') research, policy and product development. A Good germs, bad germs project website and twitter feed will be used to disseminate regular (weekly) updates on the project progress and findings. We will work with press teams at our university and project partner to broader project publicity. Existing links with the Eden Project's Human Microbiome team will be used to develop educational and public engagement materials for a national audience.

User impacts: Through collaborations with policy makers, industry and charity partners, the project aims to develop and share novel research methods and tools for engaging with the public and understanding their concerns and practices with respect to domestic hygiene. This project has been developed in collaboration with the Food Standards Agency, who constitute the primary project partner. We will also recruit a selected group of organisations representative of different positions in relation to the nature and management of domestic hygiene (for example Public Health England, Unilever, Pro-B, the Natural Bread Company, Cultured Probiotics and crohnsandcolitisUK). These groups constitute some of the potential users of the project model and its outputs. These partners will be offered the opportunity to collaborate in designing, conducting and interpreting the outcomes of a kitchen experiment. For example, exploring the impacts on microbial biodiversity of the FSA's four Cs (cleaning, cooking, chilling and avoiding cross-contamination) domestic hygiene framework; contrasting leading industry cleaning products with alternative 'probiotic' alternatives, or tracing the impact of alternative food production products and techniques - like baking and cheese-making. Users will receive a short report (5000 words) outlining the project's methodology, the tools developed, and key findings, accompanied by tailored briefing notes for key users, like the FSA. These will be written for relevant industry and third sector publications, identified in discussion with our project partners. We will host a practitioner's workshop building on responses to the report and incorporating discussions between the FSA, other project partners and participants.

In the longer term the research team will apply for ESRC impact acceleration funds to enable the PDRA to spend 2-3 months on secondment at the FSA in order to explore how the insights from the project might be used to inform FSA research, practice and policy development.