Ecological Concepts of Human Identity in Microbiome and Metagenomic Research

描述(申请人提供)：拟议的研究试图为一种新兴的文献做出贡献，该文献评估生态概念、隐喻和类比的哲学含义，这些概念开始框定我们对人类微生物组的理解，并挑战关于人体和人类的根深蒂固的机械论概念--根深蒂固的概念，不仅包括与人类基因组计划的“蓝图”类比，而且至少可以追溯到血液循环的发现。这项拟议的研究将在人类微生物组项目的背景下，利用哲学分析来探索和评估生态隐喻的应用--如“群落”、“超有机体”、“动态平衡”、“生态系统”、“动态”、“复杂性”等--以促进公众和科学地理解“人体”、“人类”和“人类个体”等概念。该项目承认了生态科学中众所周知的问题，这些问题困扰着试图将有机体统一到自然系统和社区中的概念的应用，而且确实可能会失败。这里提出的研究将探索这些问题是否也会使生态学概念在人类微生物群和超基因组研究中的应用复杂化。这项拟议的研究将考察规范性概念，如“结构”、“功能”、“相互依赖”、“共同体”，甚至“系统”是如何在医学和生态科学之间来回移动的。它将讨论人类个体生态形象的道德和概念含义--例如，将个体描绘成微生物和人类细胞的复合体，将人类基因组表现为一种景观，以及将微生物群落理想化为人类和微生物特征的一种混合体。拟议的项目将发表论文和会议报告，帮助关注微生物组和超基因组组的科学家了解他们可能进行研究的生态框架。 公共卫生相关性：公共卫生研究目前处于人类微生物群和元基因组的前沿，但缺乏一个概念框架来将这些微生物和遗传景观整合到人类、个人和个人的可识别图像中。通过哲学分析评估新出现的生态概念、隐喻和科学家构建研究框架的类比，拟议的项目将有助于澄清人类微生物组项目(HMP)的目标与HMP寻求服务的患者和患者健康的概念之间的关系。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research seeks to contribute to an emerging literature that assesses the philosophical implications of the ecological concepts, metaphors, and analogies that are beginning both to frame our understanding of the human microbiome and to challenge entrenched mechanistic concepts of the human body and the human being -- entrenched concepts that not only include the "blueprint" analogies of the Human Genome Project but stretch back at least to the discovery of the circulation of the blood. The proposed research will use philosophical analysis to explore and assess in the context of the Human Microbiome Project the application of ecological metaphors - such as "community," "superorganism," "homeostasis" "ecosystem," "dynamics," "complexity," etc. - to public and scientific understanding of such concepts as the "human body," the "human being" and the "human individual." The project acknowledges well-known problems in the ecological sciences that beset and may, indeed, defeat the application of concepts that attempt to unite organisms into natural systems and communities. The research proposed here will explore whether these kinds of problems also complicate the application of ecological concepts in the study of the human microbiome and metagenome. The proposed research will examine how normative concepts, such as "structure," "function," "interdependence," "community," and even "system" have moved back and forth between the medical and ecological sciences. It will discuss moral and conceptual implications of ecological images of the human individual - for example, the picture of the individual as a composite of microbial and human cells, the representation of the human genome as a kind of landscape, and the idealization of the microbiome as a kind of mixmaster of human and microbial traits. The proposed project will produce published papers and conference presentations that will help scientists concerned with the microbiome and metagenome to understand the ecological framework in which they may set their research. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Public health research now presses on the frontiers of the human microbiome and metagenome but lacks a conceptual framework to integrate these microbial and genetic landscapes into recognizable images of the human being, the person, and the individual. By assessing through philosophical analysis emerging ecological concepts, metaphors, and an analogies in terms of which scientists frame their research, the proposed project will help clarify the goals of the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) in its relation to conceptions the patient and patient health the HMP seeks to serve.