LAUSR

Ask a group of medical professionals and scientists what is the “hottest” area of investigation today, or to suggest a topic for a forum or symposium and the likely answer will be “the microbiome.” A quick search of PubMed for the term microbiome yielded 48,504 articles during the past 5 years and 14,817 during the past 12 months. The microbiome has even made it into the popular imagination. The adult cartoon South Park recently aired an episode about fecal transplantation and an attempt to obtain a famous football player’s microbiome, ostensibly to create a super athlete (a bit far‐fetched, but who knows). This special issue of Digestive Diseases and Sciences provides a broad perspective of the role of the human microbiome in health, chronic disease risk, and prevention.