The Ecuadorian Microbiome Project: a plea to strengthen microbial genomic research

ABSTRACT

A technological revolution provides nations with access to unprecedented quantities of molecular information, and this is particularly evident in the vast and yet poorly understood realm of the microbiome. Traditionally, many developing countries in Asia, Africa, and South America remain marginal participants in the global flow of biodata, which will eventually affect their productivity and economies. Here, we present the Ecuadorian Microbiome Project (EcuMP) as an integrative initiative to close the research gap in the microbiome for Ecuador. We discuss the relevance that the study of the microbiome has for our understanding of diversity and new forms of production and biocapital. We also evaluate the state of research in metagenomics and the microbiome for South America, with emphasis on Ecuador as a small but biodiverse country. In the strict sense of access, understanding, and technological innovation based on molecular data, we propose the definition of bioliteracy. As indirect estimates of bioliteracy, we measured the number of indexed publications, BioProjects, monthly global internet traffic to GenBank, and patent applications in Espacenet. South America has a notable unevenness in scientific productivity related to the microbiome and metagenomics. Brazil leads productivity, with most of the measured parameters remaining one order of magnitude higher than other countries in the region. Participation of South American countries in the global flow of genomic information dwarfs when compared to the US. To reduce the effects of technological dependency and the associated lack of economic productivity, Ecuador should address the technological gap in the study of the microbiome. Our assessment reveals the urgency to translate the study of microbiomes into a source of technological prowess and the basis for local biocapitals.

KEYWORDS:

• Microbial diversity
• microbiome
• metagenomics
• biocapital
• bioliteracy

Acknowledgments

Our project has been funded by the Research Grants Programme of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), to which we extend our gratitude. Our project has also received funding from the Academy of Research and Higher Education (ARES) of the Belgian Government, and as part of an integrated collaboration program with Universidad Central del Ecuador. The Ecuadorian Microbiome Project would not have been possible without the support of our home institutions, Central University of Ecuador and the Technical University of the North to which we extend our gratitude. The authors are grateful to Dr. Spiros Agathos of Université Catholique de Louvain and to Dr. Félix Sangari of the University of Cantabria for their constant support and valuable advice. Our gratitude is extended to three anonymous reviewers, whose comments and suggestions contributed to the improvement of our manuscript.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

The authors have not received any direct funding or financial support for the publication of this review. The authors do not hold any conflict-of-interest with the entities, organizations, or groups mentioned in the present review. This manuscript is the result of shared academic collaboration by the authors as a research group and is not the product of writing assistance by third parties or external associates to the research group; the latter is the sole responsible for the authorship of the present review.

Geolocation information

We place as a reference for geolocation the research lab at the Institute of Research on Zoonoses (CIZ), −0.199303, −78.505963.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the La Cooperátion Belge au Développement [ARES-UCE 15K] and The World Academy of Sciences [16-172 RG/BIO/LA_I].