Study title

New developments in the natural sciences show the great diversity of microbial life in our bodies, homes and the wider environment. This work requires us to rethink what it means to be human and hygienic. Some germs are risky, but the life in and around us also keeps us healthy. There is a growing interest in ‘probiotic’ approaches to health and hygiene that can differentiate between good and bad germs. We want to bring these scientific developments out of the laboratory to explore how they relate to everyday understandings of domestic life and kitchen hygiene. Using in-depth, semi-structured interviews, this project recruited 14 households in Oxford to ask them about their relationship with the microbes in their home, especially in the kitchen. A first round of interviews were carried out in March 2016, and a final round of exit interviews were carried out in July 2017. The project also generated significant amounts of genomic 16S data, which has been deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive.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...