Megan MacGregor

MEGAN MacGREGOR, then a graduate student at University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, was approved funding in October 2024 to aid research on “”Modern Microbiomes: Dysbiosis, Health, and Therapeutics in Global Microbiome Science,” supervised by Dr. Joseph Masco. Genomic methods of studying microbes have generated the concept of the microbiome, a term referring to the combined microorganisms and/or microbial genomes within a given environment — often the human body. This study investigates how microbiome science understands and diagnoses problematic or “dysbiotic” microbiomes. Through ethnographic fieldwork in the greater Boston area of the United States, this research phase examined how the development of microbial therapeutics is changing 1) the pharmaceutical landscape; and 2) broader understandings of health as an environmentally situated state. To support this aim, it focused on interviews and participant observation with academic and biotechnology professionals developing microbiome therapeutics, as well as how and why microbiome science emerged historically. The research found that the microbiome challenges, exceeds, and perhaps ruptures U.S. biomedical and pharmaceutical models. Recent reorganizations, failures, new definitions, and successes in microbial therapeutics reveal that they simply cannot fit into current drug-development or biomedical pipelines. Despite this, microbiome scientists see immense promise for microbial therapeutics for treating a wide range of human and environmental illnesses in unprecedented ways. Therefore, attending to the ways microbiome science challenges systems, disciplinary boundaries, and ideas about health and the body offers new possibilities for rethinking those systems and ideas.