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History and philosophy of the life sciences
Feb 12, 2024;46 (1): 12.

Scrutinizing microbiome determinism: why deterministic hypotheses about the microbiome are conceptually ungrounded.

Javier Suárez
Author Information
  1. Javier Suárez: BIOETHICS Research Group - Department of Philosophy, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain. Javier.suarez@uniovi.es. ORCID
PMID: 38347271 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-024-00610-0

Abstract

This paper addresses the topic of determinism in contemporary microbiome research. I distinguish two types of deterministic claims about the microbiome, and I show evidence that both types of claims are present in the contemporary literature. First, the idea that the host genetics determines the composition of the microbiome which I call "host-microbiome determinism". Second, the idea that the genetics of the holobiont (the individual unit composed by a host plus its microbiome) determines the expression of certain phenotypic traits, which I call "microbiome-phenotype determinism". Drawing on the stability of traits conception of individuality (Suárez in Hist Philos Life Sci 42:11, 2020) I argue that none of these deterministic hypotheses is grounded on our current knowledge of how the holobiont is transgenerationally assembled, nor how it expresses its phenotypic traits.

Keywords

Causality Hologenome Microbiome heritability Microbiota Phylosymbiosis Postgenomic determinism

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Grants

  1. 2019/35/B/HS1/01998/Narodowe Centrum Nauki
  2. SV-23-FBBVA-1/Fundación BBVA
  3. PID2022-137993NA-I00/Spanish National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation

MeSH Term

Biological Evolution
Symbiosis
Microbiota
Phenotype
Journal Article
Article has an altmetric score of 6

Word Cloud

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