title: Microbiology and ecology are vitally important to premedical curricula.
abstract: Despite the impact of the human microbiome on health, an appreciation of microbial ecology is yet to be translated into mainstream medical training and practice. The human microbiota plays a role in the development of the immune system, in the development and function of the brain, in digestion, and in host defense, and we anticipate that many more functions are yet to be discovered. We argue here that without formal exposure to microbiology and ecology-fields that explore the networks, interactions and dynamics between members of populations of microbes-vitally important links between the human microbiome and health will be overlooked. This educational shortfall has significant downstream effects on patient care and biomedical research, and we provide examples from current research highlighting the influence of the microbiome on human health. We conclude that formally incorporating microbiology and ecology into the premedical curricula is invaluable to the training of future health professionals and critical to the development of novel therapeutics and treatment practices.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA.
authors.forename: Val H
authors.initials: VH
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Rebecca J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Rubinstein
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Serry
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Department of Systems and Computational Biology and Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Libusha
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kelly
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA, vklepacc@wellesley.edu.
authors.forename: Vanja
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Klepac-Ceraj
keywords: ecology; human microbiome; microbiology; premedical curricula